Inspiration

Street Goat: A Blueprint for Urban Agroecology

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. Street Goat is a new urban farming project that grazes goats on disused land around the city of Bristol, UK. Run by a 20-member community cooperative, it provides local people with sustainable, healthy milk and meat, while helping to recover overgrown land for horticultural use. Ursula Billington reports. Viral videos were a feature of many locked-down lives in 2020, and a candid local news clip captured the imagination of the UK earlier this year: a wild Kashmiri goat herd, emboldened by the deserted streets of lockdown, trotting into Llandudno in north Wales and making themselves at home in the town. Roaming the streets with wild eyes askew and tongues lolling, they raised a collective smile from people across the country isolated in their homes. Now a new project...

January 15, 2021

Bottom-up Biodiversity

By John Thackara, John Thackara blog

This text was commissioned by the Swiss Ministry of the Environment, FOEN. It is also available online in these other languages: German Biodiversität nach dem Bottom-up-Prinzip Italian Biodiversità dal basso verso l’alt French Biodiversité : une politique de terrain https://umwelt-schweiz.ch/fr/innovations/john-thackara “The world has failed to arrest the steep decline of nature. The world must act fast to avert catastrophe”. These recent headlines have been dispiriting – but they are also misleading. High Level Meetings and international summits may indeed be an imperfect model of change – but at ground level, a million positive projects tell a different story. Whether connecting schools to farms in France, daylighting rivers in Mexico, or rewilding grasslands in Patagonia, we’re learning how to ‘do’ biodiversity well. Ecological Restoration Camps are a notable example. More than 26,000 people have joined this new movement for large-scale ecosystem restoration at a landscape scale. In temporary settlements, professional and amateur ‘’campers’ learn how...

January 14, 2021

A Review of Chris Smaje’s A Small Farm Future

By Derrick Gentry, The Owl Light News

So, what kind of a future does this book envision, and how does it differ from the past and the present?

January 15, 2021

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

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

A fast plant for rapid shifts in construction – how the ancient supercrop Hemp can help build low carbon homes

By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance

There is now a huge opportunity to scale up this kind of building, while also bringing a decent living to farmers from a crop that is environmentally sustainable to grow.

January 13, 2021

Defending the Birthplace of the Sun

By Tracy L. Barnett, Esperanza Project

It was the native Wixárika people—better known internationally by their Spanish name, the Huicholes—who galvanized a global movement with their call for help.

January 13, 2021

Indigenous-led resistance to Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline threatens Big Oil’s last stand

By Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence

Most of Line 3’s path through Minnesota bisects territory covered under the terms of a series of treaties signed between the U.S. government and different Anishinaabe bands in the mid-1800s.

January 13, 2021

Freeing space: building worlds outside of state and capital

By Dennis Schep, ROAR Magazine

In the countryside, one lives on the means of production, making food and energy sovereignty that much easier to achieve.

January 12, 2021

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

Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’ weren’t just an American idea

By Miloon Kothari, Open Democracy

January 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous State of the Union Address, delivered by the US President in 1941 at a time of deep turmoil and conflict in the world.