Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Death. More death here at the Dead End Alley Farm. This time it was our bees. The bees that up until a few weeks ago I thought were going to come through the winter successfully. But as life has shown us recently, nothing is for certain when walking down the path of homesteading.
Chewing on a mouthful of locally grown lettuce, I wondered if the claims I’d heard about the global food-justice movement were true. Was there a line to follow, however crooked, between my purchase of these greens, land reform in Brazil and opposition to genetically modified seeds in California. Or was it all just empty calories.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 yesterday in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The two identical bills expand business and marketing opportunities for farmers and ranchers while increasing consumer access to healthy foods. The legislation addresses production, aggregation, processing, marketing and distribution barriers that limit growth in local and regional food markets. The bill also makes targeted investments in programs that create jobs and spur economic growth through food and farms.
Some 1.2 billion people—almost a fifth of the world—live in areas of physical water scarcity, while another 1.6 billion face what can be called economic water shortage. The situation is only expected to worsen as population growth, climate change, investment and management shortfalls, and inefficient use of existing resources restrict the amount of water available to people. It is estimated that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, with almost half of the world living in conditions of water stress.
City dwellers may have enjoyed the sunshine during one of the driest winters on record, but the unseasonable weather has many farmers worried, and with good reason: their livelihoods hang in the balance. Fluctuations in weather do not necessarily indicate changes in climate, but climate change does impact the weather. Fearing the current weather patterns could be the new normal, California farmers are paying close attention to the forecast.
When might it be punishable to report a criminal activity? When it takes place inside a poultry warehouse, slaughterhouse, or on a cattle feedlot. That’s the upshot of a new wave of so-called “ag-gag” bills passed in state legislatures around the nation, the latest of which, AB 343, was introduced in California last month.
• An interesting post from Riverford’s Guy Watson about climate change and crops
• Hobby gardeners boost backyard biodiversity
• Huge scale of California pollination event
• Proposed law could deliver huge boost to urban agriculture in California
If you like almonds, then 2013 brought some bad news. Each year, honeybees from across the country make the trek to California, which grows 80 percent of the world’s almonds, to pollinate the almond crop. But bees have been dying in unusually large numbers for several years now, and this year appears worse than most.
A little over two years ago, we sold our house in Lexington, Kentucky to come back and settle in India. Me and my husband had spent seven and eleven years respectively in the United States and after years of confusion, vacillation, and endless planning, we finally decided to make the big move. Our compulsion to leave the United States was very strong, but our feelings were mixed. We had missed family and the surroundings familiar to us terribly the whole time we were in the United States, but so many years can hardly be just an interim—it is real time, and bound to be significant in certain ways.
The underground gourmet is an old tradition. From lemonade stands to supper clubs and modern blind pigs, people love to play restaurant. Now a new tradition, started in 2011 in Helsinki, is bringing together hundreds of make-believe restaurateurs into a worldwide celebration of this alternative economy: Restaurant Day, “a worldwide food carnival when anyone can open a restaurant.”
Aquaponics has been around for centuries. It was traditionally a technique in tropical climates, using floating bamboo rafts with vegetation in fresh water pools. This was simply the adaptation of agriculture to the tropics. The technique has become cutting edge over the last 20 years. We can adapt aquaponics to today’s geographies and culture.
In the last few years a popular meme growing throughout the ether of the inter-webs is the idea of guerrilla gardening. The idea of guerrilla gardening is really quite simple, but with some rather radical implications. Guerrilla gardening is the cultivation and care of plants (usually edibles) on land that you do not own. It is done on land that may be overlooked and forgotten about by private companies or municipalities. It may be D.O.T. land such as boulevards or parcels cut off by highways, and surrounded by entrance and exit ramps. It may be tucked away off of the beaten path in a county park, or behind the public library.
