My senior year of college wasn’t all that long ago (going on 5 years), but it feels like a lifetime. So it’s hard for me to remember now the sense of low-grade panic that consumed me during most of second semester as I struggled to figure out “what I was going to do with my life.” Luckily, one of my house mates told me about WWOOF - an international organization that pairs up willing volunteers with work stays on organic farms across the world. Within the span of a week, I had checked out WWOOF online, paid for my membership via the web, emailed a handful of farms halfway across the world, and secured myself a real life summer stint on an organic vineyard in Tuscany.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand how remarkable this process was, or that fact that a mere decade or two earlier, it would not have been possible. But the Eat Well Guide understands - and their new resource Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Movement is out to clue everyone else in.

Ironically, global technology and communications has become one of the local and sustainable food movement’s greatest allies. Without email and the web, I probably wouldn’t have had an amazing summer drinking wine and working in the fields under the hot Tuscan sun. Equally, small farmers would have a significantly harder time getting their name and product out to customers, educators and activists would struggle to spread their message to the masses, and home cooks would not have a vast network of blogs and forums to consult to figure out what the hell to do with kolhrabi.

As Cultivating the Web puts it, “The internet will never take the place of the farmers’ market, but it can help you find your way there.”

Cultivating the Web includes information about the vast variety of online tools that will continue to foster the food movement: from blogs, to viral videos, and from food porn on Flickr to Google groups. It also - tee hee- mentions The Jew & The Carrot as one of its “favorite food news and policy blogs.” (Really! Page 14. Not that I have that memorized or anything.)

It  will be distributed widely this weekend at Slow Food Nation, aka the biggest sustainable food event of the year (which, sadly, I won’t be able to attend because it happens to coincide with Hazon’s New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride… gah! Why does all the good stuff have to happen on the same weekend?!). If you’re lucky enough to get to San Francisco for the foodie party, make sure to pick up a copy. If not, you can check out Cultivating the Web here.

Out of curiosity, has technology played a role in your own sustainable food journey? If so, how?