Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If our water systems collapse, or if we decide to simplify voluntarily, individuals and households may be surprised at the lifestyle changes that will be necessary. What we own, how we use it, and even our domestic architecture will be affected.
Mohammed Ruzzi is manager of the Palestine Fair Trade Association (PFTA), a network of 51 cooperatives supporting 1200 farmers in the north of Palestine’s West Bank region. PFTA farmers export organic fairtrade olive oil and other products to the UK through Zaytoun, a UK social enterprise.
Climate change poses a real threat to farmers around the world. Agriculture is highly dependent on good weather, including high and low temperatures, rainfall, wind intensity, and many other variables. Estimates show that climate change might reduce global agriculture productivity by 17% by 2050.
In many ways, COP is bad in that it’s failing to achieve the measures that are so desperately needed to avert the climate crisis and achieve climate justice. But, COP is an opportunity for us in the UK to push our politicians to take stronger action on climate change. ‘People Make Glasgow’ is the official slogan adopted by Glasgow City Council in 2013 – I don’t think it was meant to refer explicitly to the slave trade that helped to build the city but the council openly acknowledge this history, and COP26 is an opportunity to highlight the impacts of historical and current colonialism.
Consider this: almost a fifth of the annual amount of fish caught in the wild is minced and pressed into fishmeal and fish oil, the majority of which is used in fish farming for carnivorous species such as salmon and prawns.
So, if you’re rich enough to think about these things, I’d commend the opening question as a handy personal resilience health-checker. Are there farms and gardens within walking distance of where you live that can provide for all your food needs, and those of all the other local residents? More to the point if you’re not yourself a farmer or a grower, are there people within walking distance of where you live who are likely to be willing to provide for your food needs in future scenarios of energy, climate or economic turbulence?
Unless land management strategies are overhauled to reduce the gap between forestry and agriculture, it will be impossible to feed and nourish the human population without further damaging the environment and forests, according to scientists.
The primarily low-tech, shovel-ready, affordable solutions that we need already exist in every nation and region. We don’t need to invent new techniques. We simply need to identify, publicize, replicate, and scale up currently existing best practices utilizing farmer-to-farmer education and training, with major support and funding from the public and private sectors.
Three sites were selected for continued field research into growing industrial hemp in North Carolina for 2019. Set in the rolling hills of Anson County, near Charlotte, hemp is a potential boon to a place where commodity crops and forestry are four of the top five industries. Certified hemp seed was drilled onto plots of seven acres, four acres, and nine acres, at a rate of 100 pounds per acre.
In the USA, 98 percent of all garments are now imported, compared with just five percent in 1965. Fibershed is a welcome plea for a movement to relocalize textile production, similar to that which has revived demand for local foods over the last 20 years.
But as I sit in the dirt, smelling the thyme and tomatoes and basil, hearing the bumble bees in the oregano flowers, I am humbled and grateful to be a witness to the power of life.
As part of CAWR’s Stabilisation Agriculture Programme, I recently visited Chimanimani district in Zimbabwe to initiate comparative research on how conventional and agroecologically managed landscapes coped with the impacts of Cyclone Idai in March 2019. Idai deposited the total annual rainfall in the first twelve hours alone – yet sat over and devastated Chimanimani for three days.
