To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System
If current trends continue, rural America will soon be owned by a handful of families and corporations who will run their empires remotely with driverless tractors and poorly paid staff.
Food & Water
Food from the Radical Center: Excerpt
While the subject of this story is what we may call biocultural, eco-culinary, or reciprocal restoration, it is quite often enabled through a social process that has been called either community-based restoration, collaborative conservation, or cooperative collaboration.
Real Billions and Real Trillions
In terms of money and the flow of capital through complex securities, millisecond computer trades, and financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, trillions means mind-numbing. In terms of microbes and life in the soil, trillions means teeming.
Only Possible to Feed People Sustainably in an Equitable Society
A recent report from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirms that the current food system isn’t sustainable neither for the environment nor for our health. Organic agriculture, conservation farming and agro-ecology are key technologies for a transition to a sustainable food system, which also has to shun artificial nitrogen fertilizers.
How to Set up a Squash Growing Co-op
Squashes and pumpkins are great because they’re easy to grow, are a low input/ high output crop with very low maintenance and watering, and most importantly because they provide a good winter survival food.
Seeding Control to Big Ag
Seeds are the home of life, the promise of the future. They are the foundation of civilization and culture, the guarantor of full stomachs and secure governments. They are the quotidian miracle which prompt wonder in the writings of philosophers and theologians, essayists and poets.
Build a Border Wall? Here’s What Border Communities Say They Want Instead
For many of us who actually live along the U.S.-Mexico border, the “Mesquite Manifesto” addresses economic and climate problems by building up industry around the native tree.
The Future is Rural: The Unexpected Consequence of Energy Descent
Something new will arise, and in the evolution of what comes next, many may find what is often lacking in life today—the excitement of a profound challenge, meaning beyond the self, a deep sense of purpose, and commitment to place.
Some Theses on Property, Immigration, Society and Culture
There’ll be lots of people ‘defending their culture’, lots of sacrifices by the many for the ‘good of the nation’ whose benefits will curiously accrue mainly to the few, lots more death and misery in the borderlands, lots more political polarization and lots more gated communities at various geographic levels that may become as oppressive to the people within them as without.
Bees Brought Bavarians Together. And They Have a Lesson for us All
Bavaria’s remarkable campaign to save the bees can give us all cause for optimism. Where politicians failed to protect the environment and put corporate profits first, Bavarians stood up
How a Restaurant Born at the Olympics has Strengthened the “Social Gastronomy” Movement
Food has this unique power to connect us all, and the table is that magic field where we can look to each other, eye level, no matter our backgrounds, and allow the magic of dialogue to happen,” said Mariana Vilhena, Gastromotiva’s communication and marketing director. “Social gastronomy is all about this.”
Intensive Agriculture Driving Worldwide Decline of Insects
Over 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction over the next few decades and 75% to 98% of insect biomass has already been lost, according to this review of the current state of knowledge about insect declines, with habitat loss through conversion to intensive agriculture being the main driver. Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are also driving insect declines.
