Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We can’t all be Noam Chomsky or Ayn Rand or Wendell Berry or Bingo Pajama, but that doesn’t mean each and every one of us can’t get the hint. We need a new story. Maybe even a new myth. We need to rediscover imagination. Imagination that enables us to reckon our whereabouts in a world that is heating up and speeding up.
When a young person talks to me about his dreams for a good life, my first instinct is to interrupt, to tell him the planet has determined that our good life is no longer viable, dreams or not. Instead, I tell him about lambs. The promise of birth and death and birth again. I believe in both narratives, and I don’t want to burst his bubble, so I tell only the one story.
People yearn for alternatives to industrial agriculture, but they are worried. They see large-scale operations relying on corporate-supplied chemical inputs as the only high-productivity farming model. Another approach might be kinder to the environment and less risky for consumers, but, they assume, it would not be up to the task of providing all the food needed by our still-growing global population.
I still believe in solutionary approaches, but I now have to concede that food is one tough issue to move in the right direction. There are more forceful barriers than I first imagined, and more tricky tripwires.There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, my mother warned me whenever my enthusiasm was too boyish.
Baltimore is home to an active urban foraging community that collects more than 140 different kinds of plants and fungi around from the city, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF).
Politically and intellectually, it seems like the idea of the commons is gaining traction – probably because the state and the market, its major rivals, have acquired something of an image problem in recent times. Politically, ‘the state’ has become associated with the unresponsive, centrally planned economies of communist regimes, and ‘the market’ with the flagrant inequalities and value-scouring short-termism of contemporary capitalism and/or neoliberalism.
A curious consensus has emerged in the debate about how farming should be supported if the UK leaves the European Union. With a few exceptions, everybody, from the Country Land and Business Association to the New Economics Foundation – including the Environment Secretary Michael Gove – is in favour of paying landowners to provide “public goods”.
THE CITY OF Tucson, Arizona, officially got serious about rainwater harvesting five years ago, viewing it as a cost-effective tool to reduce demand for potable water. In 2012, the city’s water utility, Tucson Water, began offering rebates to its residential customers to subsidize installation of rainwater catchment systems, both to divert water onto landscaping and store it in cisterns. Later, it expanded the program to include grants and loans to help low-income households harvest rainwater.
Global trade has brought about unparalleled specialization. As a result many countries and jurisdictions are currently unable to grow the food they need to feed their populations. While some like Hawaii still prosper, others face growing food insecurity. By gradually abandoning agriculture, have Hawaiians entered into a Faustian bargain that they will come to regret?
The Minimalist Gardener brings together a series of 17 articles written by renowned grower, permaculturist and teacher, the late Patrick Whitefield and originally published in Permaculture Magazine over a period of more than twenty years. Big thanks are due to Permanent Publications for bringing these articles together into this very accessible and easy reading new reference book.
Multi-species swards (also referred to as species-rich or diverse grasslands) are grassland communities comprising grass, legume and herb species. This increased diversity means a wide variety of plant forms are represented, which can increase biomass production and produce a forage material comprised of a variety of components, including some with medicinal qualities.
Located in the South on Main (SoMa) district of Arkansas’ capital city, The Root Café has served locally sourced breakfast, lunch, and dinner to an often-packed house since 2011. Whenever possible, the restaurant maximizes their cabinet contents by incorporating food scraps, and what would otherwise be considered food waste, into their dishes. Much of the rest goes to a local farmer who uses the scraps to feed the farm’s pigs.
