Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
You’ll need a pretty high tolerance for research studies and medical lingo to get through Autoimmune: The Cause and The Cure. But then if you or someone you love is suffering from an autoimmune disease such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, lupus or even type 2 diabetes, then you’ve probably already learned to deal with jargon-filled medical research and advice.
Like many other people, when I first encountered Permaculture I thought it was just about gardening – incorporating fruit, nut trees and other edibles into your landscape, using mulch, and composting. And yes it is true that all these are a part of Permaculture, it is also so much more! Permaculture is an ecological design system that helps to connect all aspects of our lives. From the food we eat, the water we use, or the fuel that keeps us warm, Permaculture can help us obtain the necessities for life in ways that work with the Earth and promote the long term health of the planet.
Actually, Jason Godesky is rather brilliant; his 30 Theses deserve a good look. He struggled mightily with defining horticulture and agriculture, did not quite get it right, but made a lot of good points. Can I do better? Or at least, can I come up with something that will enable us to communicate more clearly about these matters? With trepidation, I am giving it a shot. The purpose of this post is not to find the Right and Correct definition, but to untangle the definitional knots so that we can talk with one another and get somewhere.
Practitioners of urban agriculture have a lot to be proud of, including forming part of a “food movement,” which is increasing in size and influence. People are questioning food systems conventions and the dominant forms of food production (industrial farming) and distribution (globalized trade) are being opposed more and more by communities around the globe. Urban agriculturists—with their claim for a viable alternative to the broken food system—seem to have at this moment a certain cultural cachet.
In a state known for its agricultural bounty, commodity crops like wheat are a losing proposition for many farmers. California grows some 700,000 acres of wheat, much of it for livestock. The state is in a “wheat deficit,” according to the California Wheat Commission; in other words, we eat more wheat than we produce. Still, there is a slowly but steadily growing hunger for locally grown and milled whole-grain wheat, a natural extension of the locavore movement. Acme Bread Company owner Steve Sullivan has been interested in sourcing local organic wheat for years, but he hasn’t been able to make it work at his bakery’s scale of production. “We use more organic wheat than is grown in California,” he says.
IATP has always argued that trade agreements need to respect and promote human rights, not drive a process of globalization that privileges commercial interests and tramples on public interests. In a new paper on land grabs, we reaffirm that position.
• U.K. Farmers Face Seed Shortage as Spring Planting Set to Surge
• UN says fertiliser crisis is damaging the planet
• ‘Land Grabbing’: Foreign Investors Buy Up Third World Farmland
• King Corn Mowed Down 2 Million Acres of Grassland in 5 Years Flat
Although 2012 was a dismal year for my garden, for some reason it was a fabulous year for fruit. The abundant success of our fruit and nut trees, which require much less watering and care than annual vegetables, has rewarded us for the years of faith and patience that it took for the trees to grow large enough to bear fruit. Now that they have, I’m just trying to keep up with them.
•Connect The Dots: Rebuilding the Foodshed
•Urban gardener hopes to turn foreclosures into farms
•Permaculture Garden at UMass Documented on Video
How can we solve a problem (in a garden, say), with permaculture tools, by decomposing the problem and coming up with a set of interlocking pieces that solves it? Framing the problem in this way is very much applying an engineering mindset, something that might irk those who insist on thinking holistically about any and all ecological settings. (And I can relate to that sentiment, because too much has been done in engineering and science more broadly to stop holistic thinking and to employ scientific reductionism in its place.)
Throughout human history, particularly in indigenous cultures, food has been perceived as sacred. The word sacred is not a religious term but rather one that simply means “set apart” or not of the ordinary. It is also related to sacrifice which may mean that something is sacred because it derived from something sacrificed. For example, we speak of battlefields and military cemeteries as sacred. In ancient times, some temples, mountains, or forests were sacred because animals were sacrificed to a god in those places. All food is sacred in the sense that the life of a plant or animal has been sacrificed to feed another being.
"Like our religious traditions, the agriculture we are accustomed to is a 5000-year-old relic that grew surpluses, but also bequeathed enormous and spreading deserts, centralized and hierarchical wealth systems, standing militaries, and a seemingly intractable global ecological crisis."
