Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A handful of cultural associations obtained concessions to use garden lots, opening them to the public. These associations, federated within the “Fédération des Murs à Pêches,” organize a cultural festival every year as a strategic effort to build a strong network of citizens who are ready to oppose future urbanization of the site.
A CUMA is an agricultural equipment co-op that provides farmers the use of large, expensive machinery, and decreases the cost to access up-to-date equipment. As an organization, a CUMA is group of farmers involved in the same sector (grain farming, dairy, etc.), who pool equity based on the type of equipment they need.
Ant colony optimization is an approach to applying ant behavior to solving engineering and operations problems. In the process, they create a library of strategies humans can tap to solve our own food transportation challenges.
Using selective logging and controlled burns, Ashland has reduced fire risk on thousands of acres in the forested watershed that provides the city’s drinking water. The partnership that made it happen could be a model for other fire-prone communities.
The UK and US are headed for a crisis as crack-downs on immigration threaten to make it harder for agriculture to find the labour it requires. The problem, of course, is that most Westerners don’t want to do the hard, physical labour required in agriculture…
There is a sense of normality and purpose in the lives of true artisans of food, people who have learned how to engage with their environment to feed themselves. They represent the great passing on of human knowledge, with a profound understanding of how to live in a given landscape – a nobility in their craft that is threatened but unsullied by big industry.
My previous post offered a retrospective take on my ‘Peasant’s Republic of Wessex’ post cycle that I completed a while back. I thought I might now turn to another such retrospective, this time on my recently-completed ‘History of the world’ cycle. So I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the way we think about history, with the help of a couple of books from my recent reading.
I’m delighted to introduce Mark Winne’s latest book — Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement. I consider it the most important book going on today’s food movements.
In a barter environment, alcohol is a high-demand and easily tradable currency. Should we ever experience a time when our current supply chains are out of commission, those with the knowledge and ability to distill alcohol from local inputs will have a highly valued role in their community.
One of the most fascinating craft breweries in the UK can be found nestled in a series of arches beneath a railway bridge in Bermondsey in London. For the last 9 years, The Kernel, under the guidance of its founder Evin O’Riordan, have pioneered not just amazing and distinctive beers, but also an approach rooted in connection to place, to a different way of doing business.
In Rojava, a region in Syria also known as North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological vitality is taking place.
For thousands of years the arts of fermentation have transformed and preserved raw food in cultures across the world. Yet even though some of our strongest and most loved flavours – coffee, chocolate, cheese, salami, olives, as well as soy, miso and tempeh, wine and beer – are still alchemised via the life-death-life process of bacteria and yeasts, live, fizzing vegetables can be a challenge.
