Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Healthy soil is so important for life on earth yet so poorly understood or appreciated. Science and technology brought us the “green revolution”; chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, supersized tractors, genetically modified crops adapted to life drenched with agricultural chemicals. What is rarely apparent to most agricultural specialists is the damage this is causing the soil, basically turning it into ‘dirt’.
Welcome to community-owned Huxhams Cross Farm set on the rolling hills of south Devon on the edge of the Dartington Hall estate. Secured by the Biodynamic Land Trust (of which more later), its 34-acres exemplifies human-scale farming in a world increasingly dominated by industrial farming.
Sandra Postel‘s new book is Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity. It’s about the world water cycle, and about real solutions to the problem of providing water for people and food, and at the same time for nature and wildlife.
At the recent regional Summit on Migrants and Returnees in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala, October 20-21, a new and promising solution to the global “immigration crisis” emerged: the creation of local, grassroots-powered economic development projects based on regenerative food, farming and land-use practices. Regenerative food and farming is the new gold standard for climate and environmentally friendly agriculture and land use across the world.
Few animals get as bad a rap these days as cattle do. They are blamed for soil erosion, water depletion, overgrazed rangelands, greenhouse gas emissions, and, when eaten, human heart disease. Often missing from such indictments of the mooing, tail-wagging, and, yes, methane-emitting bovine, however, is our role. How we choose to manage cattle determines their environmental impact, not the animals themselves.
BastCore is located in the greater-Omaha area and serves the fiber supply chain in an altogether unique way, through the processing of hemp. Outside, those were actually bales of hemp, harvested from across the country in states like Kentucky, Colorado, and Minnesota, which I was invited to see in person for BastCore’s open house at the end of September.
On the day of the harvest of the industrial hemp variety trial in North Carolina, we packed up the truck with some harvest tools and grabbed some friends from Bountiful Backyards in Durham, NC and Homegrown Agriculture in Bethel, NC, to make the trip out to the plot to harvest the crop and set up for drying. Again we came not knowing what exactly to expect – the weather since our last visit had stayed consistent with a few showers mixed into a month of dry weeks.
Obviously, we are still in the emergency relief situation, but food takes time to grow. And so we really, really need to see this as an immediate issue. How do we get farmers back to farming? How do we get a roof over their heads? How do we get them seeds? How do we get them tools? Because it takes a while to not only be happier, but to be more autonomous.
As much as I see imagination coming through in the beers that people are making, I see it coming through in the business models and the experiences that they’re offering. To me this is still somewhat of a golden age in what’s possible from an imaginative standpoint in craft beer.
By many accounts, Vermont has developed the most comprehensive food system plan in the United States. How did Vermonters do it? We harnessed the power of networks to build trust, pursue new opportunities, and tackle long-standing problems across the state and have developed a comprehensive data collection, analysis, and visualization system for tracking progress and telling stories.
Fungusloci, based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, is a mushroom micro-farm growing gourmet oyster mushrooms on spent coffee grounds collected from local independent cafés. It’s not surprising that its creator, Dominic Thomas, is familiar with permaculture and indeed founded the urban micro-farm on such principles.
After initially helping teach walks for other foragers and loving the experience, Martin started his own company. “I set up Go Foraging in spring 2014,” he tells me. As well as the mushroom walks, he teaches plant and coastal walks. “With foraging you move with the seasons to where there is the most abundance. Autumn is about the woodlands, then I do plant walks late winter into early spring and move to the coast in the summer.”
