Philip Ackerman-Leist
Philip Ackerman-Leist, author of Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems (forthcoming 2013) and Up Tunket Road: The Education of Modern Homesteader (2009), is a professor at Green Mountain College. There he established the farm and sustainable agriculture curriculum, is director of the Green Mountain College Farm & Food Project and also founded and directs a Masters in Sustainable Food Systems (MSFS) — the nation's first online graduate program in food systems, featuring applied comparative research of students' home bioregions.
He and his wife, Erin, farmed in the South Tirol region of the Alps and North Carolina before beginning their sixteen-year homesteading and farming venture in Pawlet, Vermont. With more than two decades of "field experience" working on farms, in the classroom, and with regional food systems collaborators, Philip's work is focused on examining and reshaping local and regional food systems from the ground up.
So Much Wasted Energy - Rethinking food waste
Regardless of terminology, one point is writ clear: the most technologically and economically advanced cultures in the world have the highest rates of food waste on the planetCounting the Calories and calories
As soon as we step out of our homes in pursuit of food, we cross an energy threshold that is worth considering.Rethinking hot dinners and cold drinks
Data sometimes hurts, especially when it hits home. Just when it seemed like we could blame the farmer, the processor, and the distributor for our food energy woes, lo and behold, our constant culinary vacillations between hot and cold have conspired to put the American kitchen in the crosshairs of our food energy hunt.Food ENERGY: Processing
It is difficult to say whether our eating habits are driven by changes in the food system or vice versa.Food Movement: Wheels, Water, Rail, and Air
When we hit the distribution issue, we see the challenge of taking on the Goliaths of the food world with nothing but a slingshot in the form of a pickup truck.Can Rebulding Local Food Systems Help Promote Renewable Energy?
As soon as we begin using the word “farming” again, all of the implicit associations with farming begin to reemerge in our shared thoughts and languageRebuilding the Foodshed: Fields of ENERGY
From Chapter 4 (Energy) of the latest Resilience guide, 'Rebuilding the Foodshed'. This is a heck of a chapter...If you eat food, grow food, use energy, create energy, or make waste, you'll find yourself fascinated.Securing The Foodshed
There is little disagreement that urban farming translates into increased access to local, sustainable, and healthy food, and that this is a very good thing. But how is it done? What are the success stories of urban farming? And what exactly is a “foodshed?”Bill and Lou: A parable for saving our broken food system
Our society has become increasingly divorced from agriculture, and our assumptions about food and farming are too often based more on emotion or business interests than those of real, on-farm experiences and community decision-making about the food we raise and eat.
