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Who needs a garden?
Jane Perrone, Guardian
Fed up with waiting for an allotment? What about growing food on a verge, in a cemetery – or even on a canal boat.
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… So what can you do if you are kicking your heels waiting for a plot to come up? In many areas of the country, groups and individuals are taking matters into their own hands and turning scraps of land on roundabouts, grass verges and car parks into productive areas to grow food.
Allotment hopefuls should also be heartened by the news that British Waterways and Network Rail have joined the National Trust in pledging to pinpoint unused land that could be turned into plots.
The British Waterways scheme is part of the Capital Growth project launched by the London mayor Boris Johnson and his food adviser Rosie Boycott, which aims to create 2,012 new plots by 2012.
(26 February 2009)
California: A tiny town in the Central Valley prepares for ‘Armageddon’
Ken McLaughlin, San Jose Mercury News
… The disaster coming this spring and summer is no movie, and nothing menacing is falling from the sky. It’s about what’s not falling from the sky — rain. After three years of below-average rain and snowfall, coupled with new pumping restrictions to protect endangered fish, California’s farmers are running out of water. The devastating impact has trickled down to dozens of small Central Valley farming communities.
This is the story about one of those towns:
Firebaugh.
It’s also about Armando Ramirez, a 63-year-old barbershop owner on Firebaugh’s main street who says business is down 90 percent from last year. It’s about Manuel Rivera, 20, who is hoping against hope that he can keep the lights on at his clothing and jewelry store across the street.
… The farmers who will be slammed the hardest are those who depend on the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and canals that helped spawn California’s $36 billion farming industry — the state’s largest.
Within a couple of years, Coburn says, numerous small towns like Firebaugh could die and hundreds of thousands of once-profitable acres could turn into fields of dust. Beginning today, the federal water spigot in California has been turned off for the first time. And just as in “Armageddon,” the game might be over.
(28 February 2009)
A slideshow/audio ends with a farmer’s comment that with farming failures in California, more food will have to be imported: “If you like foreign oil, you’re going to love foreign food.”
Promoting the “localest” food of all, globally
Kitchen Gardener International
MISSION:
Kitchen Gardeners International is a 501c3 nonprofit founded in Maine, USA with friends from around the world. Our mission is to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems. In doing so, KGI seeks to connect, serve, and expand the global community of people who grow some of their own food.
BACKGROUND:
The idea for Kitchen Gardeners International was planted by founder Roger Doiron and a diverse group of kitchen gardeners who believe that food is central to human well-being and one of the best ways of uniting people of different countries and cultures around a common, positive agenda. It is registered as a 501(c)(3) public charity and governed by a volunteer board of directors with representatives from the United States and Europe. Our network of friends and supporters now includes over 9000 kitchen gardeners from 100 countries with new ones signing up each week.
JUSTIFICATION:
With the world in the grips of intersecting food, fuel, financial and environmental crises, it is clear that we need to make a shift in the way we eat and live. Kitchen gardens, food gardens, Victory Gardens – whatever term you prefer – have been an important part of our past and will play an even more critical role in the future as we work to feed a growing world population using a dwindling and increasingly polluted natural resource base. As the home food production chart to the right shows, we have lost a great deal of cultural knowledge about the production, preservation, preparation and enjoyment of healthy, whole foods. The good news is that we can bring it back and help those who would like to have a healthier, closer relationship with their food to do so.
(March 2009)
Recommended by Richard Heinberg.
