Food & Water

The Fruit Hunters

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Recently my friend John who is a fellow fruit enthusiast like myself and helps run the NASE with me, sent me an email with a link to a program entitled The Fruit Hunters. Documenting the history of fruit and the industrialization of the food chain, The Fruit Hunters takes us on a journey through history and around the globe. From the jungles of Borneo and Bali, to a banana breeder in Honduras, and the flat northern plains of Saskatchewan, people around the globe have made it their mission to preserve, propagate, and share exotic, rare, and often times threatened species of fruit.

How to Enjoy a Free, Movable Feast of Weeds

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Weeds have been given a bad reputation, but they are a spectacular movable feast. By weeds, I am not referring to pot, but the regular herbaceous plants that grow everywhere, where no one planted them… your aunt’s backyard, by the sidewalk, parking lots, park, etc. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, weeds are plants that are not valued for their use, or beauty. Plants that grow wild and strong. So wild and strong that they can take over the growth of what some call ‘superior vegetation’ — meaning those you buy at garden stores and supermarkets.

Hermannsdorf: Symbiotic Farming

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Snow is falling as the plane touches down at Munich airport. By the time we arrive in Hermannsdorf, an hour’s drive, the forests and rolling hills of the Upper Bavarian countryside are pillowed in a few inches of white powder. My wife, Quincey, and I are on a mid-winter European junket. We’ve tagged along with her father, Doug Tompkins, to visit the farm of Karl-Ludwig Schweisfurth, one of Germany’s (and the world’s) leaders in the sustainable food movement.

A visit to Edible Landscapes London

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I recently went to visit Edible Landscapes London, a project started a couple of years ago by Transition Finsbury Park. The project describes itself as: “a volunteer-led project which aims to help Londoners grow more of their own food. We propagate edible plants which are then used on local growing projects. We teach people how to recognise plants, which parts are edible, how to propagate them, how they are grown in a forest garden and even how to cook with them”.

Agricultural heritage across the millennia

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Let’s turn the clock back 4,000 years. Woolly mammoths roam the Arctic tundra, Stonehenge is under construction, and the Sahara is still largely a vegetated savannah landscape. The entirety of humanity consists of just 27 million people — smaller than the population of today’s Tokyo metropolitan area. And at this time, somewhere in the ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur, a scribe is engraving a series of cuneiform tablets with what is now the world’s oldest known example of a legal code.

Playing Possum

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So I have something to tell you all. With much hesitation and trepidation, but with encouragement from my wife and my good buddy Bill, I bring you the story of why I have blood on my hands. Two nights ago I had to kill a possum. I did not do it because I wanted to, or because I thought it would be fun, but because I was defending my chickens.

To crank or not to crank

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People intuitively view agriculture as the root of domination because intensifying food economies made possible large surpluses which could then support elites and their servants. As indeed they did. But the link with agriculture is conditional.

Beekeeping relieves land degradation in Kyrgyzstan

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In Kyrgyzstan’s Pamir-Alai mountains, remote villages are tucked high among the awe-inspiring panoramas of one of the world’s most rugged biophysical environments. Short bursts of summer and long winter dormancy ensure that the ecosystem, and the livelihoods that it supports, exist in a delicate balance.

When Agriculture Stops Working: Ten Recommendations for Growing Food in the Anthropocene

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Now, despite my best efforts to look into the crystal ball here, I fully expect there will be a lot about the future of human food acquisition that will surprise me…and perhaps even in a good way! But in light of all the known troubles bearing down on us, I think it’s just plain suicidal to muddle on as-per-usual and hope it’ll all be OK.

When agriculture stops working: A guide to growing food in the age of climate destabilization and civilization collapse

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As the toxic trappings of industrial civilization crumble around us, agriculture is set to regain its place at the forefront of our daily American lives.  …And won’t we be surprised to find out that it barely works anymore!  So perhaps it’s time we re-think our modern food-acquisition strategies in the face of the massive changes bearing down on us.  …And I mean REALLY re-think them.

My book – Edible Perennial Gardening!

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I have been researching and growing perennial veggies since 2005 and blogging about how I do this for a couple of years. My aim has always been to be able to find out as much as I could and then to share it with as many people as possible. To this end I have also been writing a book about the veggies and the garden and am really happy to be able to say that this project is now in the final stages and the book will be published in November!