Why we Need Small Farms
“It’s what a farm should be doing, feeding local people surrounding the farm,” says Gerald, “if every farmer did that, we wouldn’t need supermarkets. It’s therapy for the farmer and for the community.”
Food & Water featured
My Dinner is Stuck in Traffic (Episode 11 of Crazy Town)
In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason talk about why fossil fuels are so embedded in our food system and how changes in the way we grow food might change where all of us live. This episode is designed especially for people who like to eat food and hope to continue doing so.
The Softening of Cities
Recently, cities have been rethinking their hard alleys. Montreal has an official Ruelle Verte (“Green Alley”) program encompassing more than 250 back routes that have been turned into gardens, play spaces, and neighborhood gathering spots.
How A Sustainable Food System Is Built
Soils are, after all, the structural foundation for any food production system. So when we first undertake an agroecological approach to farming, we are literally building a sustainable food system from the ground up.
The Next Regeneration
Dobson’s work is an early step toward finding a way to grow food that restores, rather than exhausts, the earth. “We’re not all the way there yet,” he said. “Humanity has yet to discover 98 percent of what’s under our feet.”
Bringing Wendell Berry (and Business) to Sterling
Well, however one construes it, keeping in mind that rebuilding a sense of place will probably also mean rebuilding a sense of mutual obligation between different types of places is an important lesson, I think.
A Convenient Untruth
Virtually all of these papers and the FAO’s figure of 14.5 percent are flawed because they employ a formula for equating the climate impact of methane emissions with that of carbon dioxide— through the unit known as “CO2 equivalent “— which is highly misleading.
Safeguarding Native Genetics
We need the diversity that rare breeds represent. Today’s generation needs to understand how relevant traditional breeds are to modern food production.
Democratising Agricultural Research for Food Sovereignty in West Africa
The West African part of the action-research programme – Democratising Agricultural Research for Food Sovereignty – has made a conscious effort to include members of both advocacy and practitioner movements.
Understanding Where our Bread is Really Buttered
My overriding (and underlying) point is that Agriculture and Land Use (/abuse) are fundamental to everything else and they are not given a fraction of the attention they deserve
The Great Divide
Our increasing disconnection from our rural origins represents an increasing disconnection from ourselves, compromising our ability to flourish. Perhaps it’s time to rethink our disconnect with food and bridge that great divide.
Rajasthan: A Seed Story
In my work, growing and saving seeds of rare and endangered cash crops, I was keen to gain an understanding of the challenges and realities for an expanding cohort of horticulturalists that were continuing a traditional, low-input sustainable model of cultivation and responding to an increasing demand for organically grown produce.
