Grace Gershuny is nationally known in the alternative agriculture movement, having worked for almost 20 years as an organizer, educator, author and consultant, as well as a small-scale market gardener. She has written several books and numerous articles on soil management and composting, including "The Soul of Soil," coauthored with Joe Smillie and "Start with the Soil," published by Rodale Press, and edited the most recent edition of "The Rodale Book of Composting." She serves as editor of the "Organic Farmer: The Digest of Sustainable Agriculture" for its four-year existence. Grace teaches about gardening and agricultural issues at the Institure for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vt., and at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vt. Grace worked for NOFA in the '70s and '80s in many capacities, including developing its first organic certification program in 1977, and was a founding member of the Organic Trade Association. From 1994-99 she served on the Staff of USDA's National Organic Program, and was a principal author of its first, much-maligned proposed rule. She is now consulting for the organic industry, doing a few inspections here and there, and working on a book about the real meaning of organic.

She still grows most of her own veggies at her homestead ub Barnet, Vt. where she lives with her daughter, Opal Hoyt.