The winners take the most
From 2018 to 2020, the top four seed and agro-chemical firms controlled 60-70% of the global pesticides market, and 50-60% of the $45 billion global seed market. How did this happen?
Food & Water featured
By the Rivers of Babylon: debating agrarianism with Tom Murphy
There’s nothing much we can do about this world-as-it-might-be symbolic capacity we have, simultaneously humanity’s blessing or genius and also our curse. Writing, farming and so on were not the cause of our malaise but the result of it.
When Water Decides: Securing National Ambitions through the Hydrological Cycle
As long as water is treated as a problem to be drained rather than an ally to be welcomed, it will abandon us when we need it most and strike when we are least prepared.
Permanent Agriculture Part 1: Tree Crops
Almost one hundred years later, Smith’s original ideas for planting a two story agriculture remain inspired—planting crop trees on challenging and depleted land. Trees can do most of the heavy work when it comes to feeding the inhabitants of our planet and repairing our land.
How Breaking — and Repairing — the Water Cycle Shapes Our Climate Future
In arid and semi-arid regions, retaining rainfall where it falls is not an ecological luxury. It is a prerequisite for long-term water security, climate stability, and social resilience.
Ireland | Feeding Ourselves, breaking new ground for the local food movement
Farmers, following a bodhrán deftly drummed by Talamh Beo’s Fergal Anderson, brought themselves and their produce from their farms, telling a little of their stories of who they are, what they do, and how they do it. They stood front and centre, and it centred us too.
Growing the Nourishment We Seek
The garden is a profoundly simple setting for reconnecting with the earth, with one another, and with ourselves.
Managing Water Differently: Algeria Facing Hydrological Extremes
What if, in Algeria, water were no longer seen solely as a scarce resource to exploit or a threat to control, but as an ecological and economic capital to preserve and develop?
The challenge of food ecomodernism: a puzzle outlined
Ah well, the urgency of staving off as best I can the disaster capitalism that Philip Loring mentions keeps me going, even if it feels like a dispiriting and unequal battle sometimes. Cheers!
The Tehran snapshot
Climate abandonment can be avoided, or put off, in only so many cases. The culprits of this crisis may be water barons, but it is just one early punctuation point on a much longer, much steeper trendline.
Winter Solstice 2025
The day after the solstice we gain a few more minutes of sunlight. Every new year, every season, every cycle, every brand new twenty four hours is a new beginning. Seize the day.
The Hands That Harvest: Resilience and Change in Ghana’s Cocoa Belt
Janet, Racheal, and Joyce illustrate how knowledge, community support, and financial literacy can transform lives. They are building houses, saving money, improving their families’ health, and educating their children.
