Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A method being applied more widely in the food system today is an economic model called true cost accounting, which identifies and quantifies the total cost of food and agricultural production depending on the type of farming system.
We receive a lot of visitors to Winged Elm Farm. Most are thoughtful and respectful of our time, appreciative of what we have to offer. We enjoy the showing and explaining of our routines. For many, it is their first outing to any sort of farm. With that in mind, I offer this curmudgeonly guide to the dos and don’ts of a visit.
The wild food still exists all around us, though, all over our fields, and our hedgerows create a vertical salad bar filled with food for the taking. Some of these are wilder versions of familiar vegetables, like wild parsnip or sea beet, while others have no domesticated equivalent, like fat hen or jack-by-the-hedge.
Individualist ‘solutions’ to climate change – like prioritizing veganism – support this myth. We need to restructure our economy away from fossil fuel reliance and improve livelihoods as we do it.
It is time for communities to take up financing their foodshed. Doing so can grow regional food economies and bring a new crop of supporters into the tent of Local Food.
Since September 2016, 135 families associated with the Committee for Campesino Unity, also known by its Spanish acronym CUC, have maintained an occupation of a finca, or a large plantation, named Las Palmeras near the municipality of Cuyotenango.
Joanna Blythman explains the five foods that she no longer eats, and why.
It was a fenced-off World War II bomb site that had rewilded, and a team of London artists decided it was the perfect place to grow a medicine garden. The site is in the middle of a social housing complex in the Bethnal Green neighborhood of Tower Hamlets, a London borough that has become the U.K.’s second most densely populated local authority, the basic unit of local government.
While awareness of soil health is increasing, current global agricultural regulations and policy and market incentives do not lead agriculture toward a sustainable future.
The U.S. Congress will be considering renewing the Farm Bill before the current authorization expires on September 30, 2018. As Feasta members commemorate 20 years of innovative policy ideas, sustainable food policy will continue to be a top priority.
In common with other critical social movements, the community gardens presented their demands under the umbrella of the right to the city, understood not as a legal claim, but as citizens’ right to intervene in the city, to build it and transform it.
One of the greatest benefits of local food is that it enables the public to form a new relationship with the people who grow and process their food. We can meet the producers and ask questions. What chemicals are they using? Do their animals look well cared for? Are they a good employer? Do they contribute to their community?
