Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A Wisconsin appeals court has ruled that the state’s Department of Natural Resources has the authority to regulate large-scale animal farms, a blow to big farm groups amid their decades-long fight to scale back environmental oversight.
Against this backdrop, the case of Marburg reminds us how local communities are building sustainable food systems for their regions, despite the obstacles. If EU agriculture and rural policies are mishandled in the next cycle, those obstacles will likely intensify – but the changemakers will keep moving.
When we begin to act with deep time in mind, perhaps future generations will remember us not for what we took, but for what we tended, protected, and passed on.
The gratitude I feel for the Earth and its endless wonders of regeneration returns to me and extends to people who are using whatever means they have to engage with the preservation of farmland and wild habitat, even in the face of the all-consuming, capitalist machine.
How can the necessary relocalisation of food systems be reconciled with a need for exchange based on mutual aid, complementarity, and reciprocity? Can local biodiversity (and its products) support territorially grounded agricultural economies while also nurturing the emergence of spaces for innovation and cooperation across diverse realities?
A national human ecology curriculum that begins with food education could help address our most pressing crises—from climate change to inequality—by teaching students how to live well and care for one another.
I have hauled a lot of buckets of water across the street, trying to make up for the less than 1.5″ of rain in my rain gauge for all of August. For comparison, my town’s August average is 3.5″, and in the last two years my gauge has seen over 9″ — both prior Augusts following on July floods, whereas this year July barely hit average precipitation.
On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy to discuss the importance of water and hydrology and the complex ways they impact our planet.
The certified organic system is part of the capitalist economic system. It makes it ”realistic” but it also forces it to adapt to the system in order to be successful. And as the system as a whole is not sustainable, it can also not be sustainable in the long run.
We are not powerless. Every time we make a purchase, especially with our food, there are consequences to our health and the health of our environment.
To find satisfaction you have to have an encounter with the real world and absorb its great subtleties. It’s difficult to make the deep connections about food without meeting the people that grow the plants or bake the bread, or doing those things yourself.
The developments of the organic certification system is today driven by the actors who have a vested interest in it, such as the standard-setters, certification bodies, government bureaucrats and consultants; not by the farmers, food producers, consumers and the trade they are supposed to serve.
