In the latest round of “10 Words or Less,” the participant is one of the panelists May 26 for “Food and Sustainability,” a continuation of the two-year “Let’s Talk About Food” series being conducted by Boston’s Museum of Science. Carroll is the author of several books, including “Pastures of Plenty” and “The Real Dirt.” Remember: Please, no counting; the 10-word thing is a goal, not a rule, and besides, let’s see you do it.
Name: John E. Carroll
Age: 65
Residence: Durham, N.H.
Occupation: Professor of environmental conservation, University of New Hampshire
Passion: “Watching the growth of the new local food and farming movement.”

Whole or local? “Local.”
Favorite plant to grow:“Green beans. We grow an heirloom variety called the Carver, which comes from pre-Civil War New Hampshire.”
What's special about it? “We knew personally the last of the human line of Carvers, farmer Jack Carver of Epping. He asked us to carry on the line.”
Where you draw the line: “To consume a majority of local foods from very nearby.”
What should I know about soil? “Without soil. we cannot eat, so without soil, we cannot live.”
A figure in sustainability you admire: “Wendell Berry.”
Why? “I’m intimately familiar with all of his work for 35-40 years. I teach it in the classroom, and I have high regard for it. It is authentic.”
A topic many people don’t connect with food and sustainability: “Grazing, or grass farming. It is absolutely vital to sustainability.”
Strongest reason for hope: “What I see happening, at the grassroots, not reported in any mass media, indicates a true revolution, not just a return or renaissance, in New England agriculture.”

Carroll will be joined on the panel by John Reilly, codirector of the MIT Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “Food and Sustainability” is the penultimate event of the series’ first year. A festival with a food truck food court, booths, activities, and an “endless table” of food discussion is planned along the Charles River, caddy-corner to the museum behind the Royal Sonesta hotel, for June 25.