Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
These agricultural protests did not happen out of the blue; they weren’t just copycat versions of what was happening in Paris. They were an episode in ongoing struggles that had been pursued by French farmers for many years before 1968, and were to continue long after.
Historians have spilled a lot of ink on the question of how capitalism supplanted feudalism, but what will happen in the future if by design, default or disaster our present capitalist society is supplanted by a lower energy alternative with more people devoting themselves to the agrarian arts?
At The Future of UK Farming conference this April, The Sustainable Food Trust’s Patrick Holden chaired a session on “Measuring and Valuing Sustainability”. The panel discussed how to transform the economic environment for sustainable food production by empowering farmers to deliver measurable public goods.
Truly, this isn’t much on which to build an optimistic view of the current rural-urban divide. Yet as I mentioned in my piece A Great Divide, the hard work of dialog will be left to us — town and country, middle America and the coasts — to create anew a language of respect and understanding.
The central, overarching question on which all sides apparently agree is this: To avoid disastrous climate change and environmental destruction, how are we humans to manage our land such that the land regenerates, biodiversity increases, and carbon is sequestered?
The organization’s Ark of Taste initiative is cataloging indigenous species of fruits and vegetables all over the world. And every 2 years, Slow Food brings members together to celebrate Terra Madre, or Mother Earth, at Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy.
Among a number of movements, civil society organisations and campaigns addressing the agrarian crisis and the effects of industrial agriculture in India, the permaculture movement is fast gaining ground among subsistence farmers and proponents of alternative agriculture.
We’ve forgotten that we are all healers. We don’t have to go to school or memorize names in Latin; we all have access to plants and can comfort ourselves with our plant ancestors, Just as the Intertribal Canoe Journey has revitalized our culture, we hope that plant medicine will be one more pathway to connection and community healing.
In choosing the name of a place, The Chico Flax Project is pointing to more than the location of their farm — they’re highlighting the numerous community members interwoven with the vision to make a Chico-based cloth.
Viewed over centuries, the beneficial role of upland farmers as stewards of both the landscape and their local communities is clear. However, George Monbiot, spoke for rewilding largely from an ideological standpoint.
The farming and gardening section, alone, in my home library contains approximately 300 titles. Here are five titles that inspired me to want to farm.
In the recent debate about beef and it’s impact on the environment there are two views. There are those who view cattle as greenhouse-gas belching planet destroyers, while others depict them as benevolent carbon sequestration machines.
