Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Although largely described by the media and international aid agencies as being caused by two primary factors, drought and war, the current spate of famine is better understood as a broader socio-economic and political process, one that has rendered some groups more vulnerable to food insecurity than others.
So those who claim that Malthusian limits don’t apply to humans are effectively assigning our species the status of permanent evolutionary winners.
Proyecto Plato Lleno counts 439 food rescues in Buenos Aires, a total of 46,269 kilos of food saved from the dumpster. According to their calculations, this equals 92,538 “full plates” across 60 shelters, foundations, and schools.
Traditionally, smallholder farming communities worked together, sharing localized innovations and best practices with one another in a horizontal and collective spread.
This lively reference book offers great insights and practical advice for those striving to embrace sustainable, nature-based ways of living—and to liberate themselves from the pernicious, ailing technosphere that dictates life for most people in the industrial world.
There will be light posting from 20th April to 5th May due to editorial vacations. Regular posting will resume on 8th May. Teaser photo credit: By ClemRutter, Rochester, Kent. – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2163988
For the ecomodernists, the world presents itself predominantly as a set of technical challenges – how to feed the world, how to power it, and so forth. The mood is optimism, the modus operandi is solutionism.
How does resource sharing affect biodiversity? How does knowledge exchange drive community resilience? How is information access—delivered via technologies—an equalizer among the underrepresented, marginalized, and oppressed? How does our ability to feed a growing planet depend on a culture of openness?
Meals on Wheels delivers freshly made, healthy meals to seniors and other homebound persons across the United States. Operating through a network of more than 5,000 local groups, Meals on Wheels is able to provide 218 million meals to over 2.4 million people annually.
By living and grazing on land that is managed with Carbon Farming techniques, Stemple Creek’s wool draws down more carbon out of the atmosphere than is produced in its raising and processing.
Besides deregulation and competition from large-scale agribusinesses, there’s a new factor casting uncertainty over the future of Britain’s small farms: the ‘B’ word. Since the EU referendum in summer 2016, there’s been much uncertainty around what future farming policy will look like.
The food system as commons, a shared interest and shared responsibility, emerges as a competing narrative to food as commodity. Rethinking food as a right, farming as a management system of the planet and the food system as a commons also necessitates the building of new institutions fit for these purposes.
