Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Scientists thought they could make hamsters more cooperative by editing out a gene … But just the opposite happened. Both male and female hamsters with the altered gene became more aggressive—much more aggressive.
Rural areas are wholesome spaces and only policies which take this wholesomeness into account will be supportive to rural areas where thriving societies live, work and evolve. We have gathered examples of how it works. The moment to start a new integrated rural policy is now.
In the everyday work of my farm, most of the decisions I make, in one way or another, are driven by the goal of continuing to grow and protect soil.
Betsy Taylor is president of Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions LLC. For over thirty years, Betsy Taylor has built a solid reputation as a philanthropic advisor, social change leader, motivational speaker and problem solver. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
To increase the distance between humans and the living world which is also our life support system is bound to aggravate the separation between humans and nature with devastating results for both humans and the rest of the living world.
People need to be educated to get involved: that they are supporting small systems that are not mechanised, that are not economically fragile. There’s nothing quaint about coming to help out on the farm.
In letting go, in providing space for coastal ecosystems, we acknowledge the power of waterlands—to hold water, to hold carbon, to hold life, including us.
Soil is not dirt. It is not a pile of fine-ground rock and biological detritus. It is not even a home for mycelium and microorganisms, annelids and insects, roots and burrowing chordates. It is the sum of all those things living together.
The re-establishment in public discourse of a Welsh food culture, with its long history, its ingredients and methods, provides the possibility of a rooted baseline for the future of food in this country; open to change, but aware of its provenance.
It is time for the United Nations and its various agencies to recognize that its top-down organizational structure is not suited to address our myriad ecological crises, and rather use its influence to advocate for, and allocate its resources to support, land custodianship for the millions of indigenous communities keeping alive the knowledge of how to live within the bounty of what our mother Earth provides.
One of the key learnings of 2021 is the necessity to think AND act in a systemic and holistic way – a manner that builds bridges rather than breaks them down, or questions existing ones.
I needed to speak to people whose ancestors had experienced the slaughter of their bison herds, the enslavement of their entire family, the brutal exploitation of migratory farm work, or incarceration at the hands of their own government while their crops were left to rot.
