Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I was inspired for some time by the Hop Clubs started in Brixton and elsewhere, in particular by Crystal Palace Transition Town’s ‘Palace Pint’ project, growing hops in many locations across their neighbourhood, including their ‘Tipsy Garden’ in a local pub, and by the Stroud Brewery who do it too.
The University of the District of Columbia is leading the charge in transforming the food system in a city challenged with high levels of poverty, obesity, and population growth.
Soil is a vital resource that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates contributes about USD $16.5 trillion in ecosystem services annually.
So I feel a particular sadness watching old barns fall into disuse or being torn down before their time, the wood destined to deck a second home on the lake or, more often, simply bulldozed and burned.
In my last post I presented a picture of the production on an ‘average’ 10 hectare holding in the future Peasant’s Republic of Wessex. Here I’m going to update that picture slightly in the light of some of the comments I received and then take a look at what sort of diet such a holding would turn out for its inhabitants.
If we want to see food waste, we have to look beyond landfill sites.
Journalist Judith D. Schwartz turns her attention to one of the biggest socio-economic-ecological issues of the 21st century – water management – in her new book, Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World.
For the soil is the gut – the source of nourishment – for the plants we farmers grow. And it now seems there is a vital link between the microbiome of our intestines and the microbiome of the soil.
Where does soil come from? In keeping with the big-picture perspective of this series, let’s tackle that question from the god’s-eye perspective. We can zero in on the finer points later.
Why would the Slovenian Public Radio, the Botanical Garden at the University of Ljubljana and a number of volunteers all express interest in an area along a railway line?
Without further ado, I’m going to describe the layout of an ‘average’ 10 hectare holding in the Peasant’s Republic of Wessex, circa 2039, as introduced in various preceding posts.
One of the biggest threats to food security the world currently faces is neoliberalism.
