Food & Water

Sims Hill January harvest

Urban Food Revolution Gaining Ground In Bristol

By Ursula Billington, ARC2020

Ed. note: This article first appeared on ARC2020.eu. ARC2020 is a platform for agri-food and rural actors working towards better food, farming, and rural policies for Europe. All hands to shovelling compost. Image © Sims Hill CSA Small-scale urban farming is a key piece of the food resilience puzzle. In the face of crisis, local growing has proved a reliable ally. For the city of Bristol, a turning point in the local food revolution has been a community growing project called Grow Wilder that is rooted in respect for the soil and a collaborative ecosystem. Ursula Billington reports. Grow Wilder, a community food and wildlife haven founded on Bristol’s urban fringe in 2012, caught immediate attention with its burgeoning produce in a year so wet that established projects reported crops rotting in the ground. Its secret lies hidden in the rich red depths: the fertile soil of the Blue Finger, a strip...

  • January 29, 2021
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Farming While Black cover

Revisiting the Commons

By Derrick Gentry, The Owl Light News

As more and more of us are turned on to the idea of small-scale self-reliance and seek to build resilient local communities, one of the most serious challenges we face is basic access to affordable land.

  • January 28, 2021
A Small Farm Future

Can the peasant speak?

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

As I see it, the case for a turn to peasant farming today is about trying to meet the challenges of the present, not about trying to recross that unbridgeable and silent river of history.

  • January 25, 2021
Tomatoes

Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution

By Gaia Foundation staff, Gaia Foundation

First published in 1985 by agronomist Francis Chaboussou, Healthy Crops: A New Agricultural Revolution is republished online in full here for the first time!

  • January 22, 2021
Episode 18

What if a revolution in our relation to land unlocked a revolution of the imagination?

By Rob Hopkins, Josina Calliste, Chris Smaje, Rob Hopkins blog

In today’s episode we bring together Josina Calliste, a health professional and community organiser who is one of the co-founders of Land in Our Names (LION), a black-led collective addressing land inequalities affecting black people and people of colour’s ability to farm and grow food in Britain, and Chris Smaje, author of the book ‘A Small Farm Future‘ and the brilliant blog of the same name.

  • January 21, 2021
porridge oats

Oats or milk is not the question

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

The choice between milk and plant-based alternatives is less important than how the food system is designed and how they are produced.

  • January 19, 2021
Whitewashed Hope

Whitewashed Hope

By 10+ indigenous authors, Indigenous World Views

While the practices 'sustainable farming' promote are important, they do not encompass the deep cultural and relational changes needed to realize our collective healing.

  • January 18, 2021
A Small Farm Future

Where the story takes us

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

Chapters 1 and 2 of my book tell a story about how our current modern global civilization has got itself into a mess by disregarding some such factors that complicate its tale of endless self-improvement.

  • January 18, 2021
Street Goat

Street Goat: A Blueprint for Urban Agroecology

By Ursula Billington, ARC2020

The original Street Goat concept focused on turning disused land into productive space: bringing goats in to clear scrub, improving sustainability whilst providing a workable model for non-intensive urban dairy production.

  • January 15, 2021
Fungi of Saskatchewan

Bottom-up Biodiversity

By John Thackara, John Thackara blog

Whether connecting schools to farms in France, daylighting rivers in Mexico, or rewilding grasslands in Patagonia, we’re learning how to ‘do’ biodiversity well.

  • January 14, 2021
Gender equality

The Intersection of Gender Equality and Agroecology

By Jen Scott, A Growing Culture

The weekly #HUNGERFORJUSTICE Broadcast Series lays the building blocks for a post-COVID food system. Watch the recording of our first episode: The Intersection of Gender Equality and Agroecology with Seno Tsuhah and Wekoweu Akole Tsuhah, moderated by Jen Scott.

  • January 14, 2021
squash

A Farmer and His Extra Row

By Laura Markowitz, Transition US

Plenty of farmers might like to plant an extra row for their community, but may need a helping hand to pull it off.

  • January 13, 2021
FLAME youth

Food, Land, Agriculture: A movement for equality

By Landworkers' Alliance Staff, Landworkers Alliance

FLAME is made up of young people who believe that the way we produce food and eat it can be a solution to creating a better world.

  • January 12, 2021
Agricultural archaeology

France | Lessons from Agricultural Archeology

By Sjoerd Wartena, ARC2020

In these 500 hectares of mainly wild nature, I now constantly look for signs of the ancestors of the indigenous population. I have always been fascinated by the life of the previous generation that was born and bred here, who shaped our way of practicing agriculture and animal husbandry.

  • January 12, 2021
A Small Farm Future

Automation and a small farm future

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

One way to address the impasse of the present global political economy may be to embrace the possibility of creating a labour-intensive, semi-autonomous livelihood through farming, homesteading or gardening largely on one’s own account, within a wider society which is collectively oriented to enabling people to live that way.

  • January 11, 2021
Aldwich Estate viticulture

UK | Sustainable Wine’s Reign of Terroir

By Ursula Billington, ARC2020

Undaunted by the challenge of growing grapes in rainy England, the family-run Aldwick Estate turned to wine production as a way to improve soil health.

  • January 8, 2021
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