Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The food justice movement is one of the most promising political developments of the last generation. It has broadened and deepened environmentalism by knitting together concerns about economic inequality, labor rights, environmental health, and sustainable agriculture.
An exciting food project called Grown in Totnes has started trading in this South Devon market town, selling processed grains, peas and flours to local shops, bakers and colleges.
Thus, the low cost of ingredients and labor enable food waste. And if the food industry is addicted to overproduction, then the emergency food system is its enabler.
We have proposed a policy that would allow more sales of fresh homemade foods made in home kitchens with reasonable food safety requirements (such as safe food handling training, kitchen inspections, sanitary standards) and with the important condition that only certain types of legal entities could operate a web application or web platform that promotes sales of homemade food and takes a cut of each transaction.
More on organic farming, trade-offs, energy futures and small-farm definitions in this post. Veritably, it’s your one stop shop for a pick ‘n’ mix of eco-futurism…partly because indeed I have a few addendums to report on recent posts, and partly because despite my flippant recent remarks, I’m a bit too busy on the farm and on other things just now to put together a properly structured post.
There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?
The goal of TEEBAgriFood is more comprehensively to determine the absolute costs, benefits, and dependencies of agriculture and food production. TEEBAgriFood is creating a framework for assessing all the impacts of food, from farm to fork to disposal, including effects on livelihoods, the environment, and human health.
One such organisation is OpenSourceSeeds (OSS). By equipping plant breeders and propagators with a free, open-source licence for the seeds they breed, they provide the necessary legal protection to prevent the patenting of the seed by other parties.
Over the last few years, with the rise in awareness of food waste and its environmental implications as well as emerging discourses around a “sharing economy”, there has been renewed interest in food sharing practices and particularly the role that information and communication technologies (ICT) can play in extending the spaces and sites in which food sharing can take place.
2017 was a year that didn’t go according to plan, and thus neither did this blog. However, I’m back to the blog now and intend to continue making posts on an irregular basis. And that means it’s time to report on what the garden told me in 2017.
Instead of retreating into urban eco-sanctuaries and buying industrial fare in hygienic and eco-friendly packaging, people need to grow, tend to animals, muck, dig, cook and bake. Only then can we expect people to become ecologically literate and realise that we are part of nature.
This year, across much of the West, particularly the Southwest, there’s little in the way of abundance. At Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the West, runoff is predicted to be only 43 percent of average. Arizona is looking at one of its lowest runoff years in history. And in New Mexico, stretches of the Rio Grande have already run dry, months ahead of normal.
