Food & Water featured

Eating Local Food in Bristol: From Farm to Table

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Getting your produce onto the plate of the end consumer is one of the key challenges for local food producers, who often face obstacles in the form of unpredictable orders and time consuming packaging and deliveries. One of the strengths of the food scene in Bristol is the variety of different routes available to producers; from innovative direct to customer models to businesses with a firm commitment to sourcing locally, Bristol is a city that is working hard to get its local food to the customer.

Black Neighbors Band Together to Bring in Healthy Food, Co-op-Style

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A decade ago, researchers reported that more than half of Detroit residents live in a food desert—an area where access to fresh and affordable healthy foods is limited because grocery stores are too far away. Efforts since then to bring more grocery stores—and food security—to predominantly Black neighborhoods haven’t worked. But that’s looking to change.

Tombreck – Pigs, Community Land Ownership, and Thinking about the Future

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The question of land is crucial to answer today’s ecological and social issues. Indeed, who owns it is usually a good indicator of the state of our societies, and has a deep impact on what is done on it. Once again, the physical and temporal factors are intrinsically linked. When people own the land, as is the case in community owned land that id being developed in the North West of Scotland, they feel a stronger connection to it and are therefore more keen on protecting it and securing it for future generations.

How to Feed Ourselves in a Time of Climate Crisis

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Changing the food system is the most important thing humans can do to fix our broken carbon cycles. Meanwhile, food security is all about adaptation when you’re dealing with crazy weather and shifting growing zones. How can a world of 7 billion—and growing—feed itself? Here are 13 of the best ideas for a just and sustainable food system. 

Approaching a United Nations Declaration on Peasant Rights

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Peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous people and rural workers gathered together once again in Geneva from 15 – 19 May, 2017, to claim their rights and to have them recognised in the human rights law framework through a United Nations declaration. The right to land, to seeds, to food sovereignty, to markets, to fair working conditions and to public policy participation were all at stake as the fourth session of the UN Open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIWG) addressed the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.

The Return of the Peasant: or the History of the World in 10½ Blog Posts. 2.

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But how did we get from the Palaeolithic foraging of my last post to the very apogee of mixed agrarianism shown in the picture? I’m glad you asked. To answer it, I need to go to way back when and return to my main historical thread by looking at some of the tensions within…

What the Garden-Hacking Grandmas and Grandpas of South Korea Know

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But what if a garden culture could flourish anywhere, regardless of how the structure of a city was designed? And what if, by allowing such a culture to flourish, we could begin to heal some of our most pressing ecological and social issues? During the past five years, my partner Suhee Kang and I have enjoyed the opportunity to engage somewhat deeply with these kinds of places—both in concrete-lined urban corridors and in lush fields of hillside natural farms.

Hurricane Harvey’s Impact on Texan Farmers

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Hurricane Harvey, the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in more than a decade, is expected to have a significant impact on Texan farmers, ranchers, and Texas’s agricultural export industry. With more than 50 inches of total rainfall already recorded, water damage to grain and vegetable crops, food warehouses, and transportation routes has begun to affect the food supply.

The Return of the Peasant: Or the History of the World in 10½ Blog Posts. 1. Origins

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In the beginning, there was a Miocene ape – the common ancestor of our genus Homo and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas. It bequeathed to us its descendants, so the primatologists suggest, a tendency towards (particularly male, but also female) status ranking. Do we need to go that far back into our evolutionary past in order to understand the nature of status competition in contemporary societies? Perhaps it’s a sociological heresy to say so, but I think the answer is quite possibly yes.

Climate Beneficial Design

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Celebrating the collaborations that transform materials from soil to skin, we set out to visit each designer creating a full look for the Climate Beneficial Fashion Gala. Here we share excerpts from three conversations: read on for inspiration from their design practices and pathways to sustainability, and how each consumer, designer, and the fashion industry as a whole can take part in environmental restoration.