Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Ken Olsen is not just growing delicious oranges and mandarins; he’s growing a healthy ecosystem. “It’s like paradise here,” the citrus farmer says of Olsen Organic Farm in Lindsay, 180 miles southeast of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. While conventional citrus farmers rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to maintain large, monocultural orchards, Ken sees his organic farming practices as an extension of his reverence for the natural world.
Here’s a great story about the power of just doing stuff, from Crystal Palace in London. I heard recently that Crystal Palace Transition Town (CPTT) had won the People’s Food Garden Award in the Capital Growth Grow For Gold awards late last year, and I was intrigued to know more about their Westow Park Community Garden and how it came about.
Post Carbon Fellow Sandra Postel recently gave a talk on ‘Will We have Enough Water? Adapting to a Warming, Water-Stressed World’ for the Moos Family Speaker Series on Water Resources.
We humans tend not to name individual animals we plan to eat. Somehow naming them seems to make it harder to look them in the eye, if one is considering eating them. We called her Daisy Mae. On Sunday I took her into my hands, petted her and thanked her for the many eggs she had given us.
What especially impressed me in Rebuilding the Foodshed (though I could easily have tagged each page with a sticky note or more) is that Ackerman-Leist stresses the importance of being in a conversation with others, including those who are not necessarily like-minded, if change is to take place. Communities that manage to survive and prevail display a resilience that is ultimately based on the ability to have those conversations, to listen and speak and reason.
The Speedy Vegetable Garden by Mark Diacono and Lia Leendertz is a quick read (that’s a joke). Actually this wonderful book by Timber Press arrived just in time to stave off the mid-winter crazies. Too soon to plant outside but full on garden growing in my brain. I had been looking for a book on sprouting – not necessarily because I crave speed, but I certainly crave that special taste – and pride – you only receive from growing your own food.
Austerity? I want to eat well, with a clean conscience, on a low budget. But is that possible? Surely a cheap ethical diet condemns me to a grim regime of porridge and cabbage soup? Where will I source that essential nutrient pleasure?
Writing in National Geographic in December 2012 about “small-scale irrigation techniques with simple buckets, affordable pumps, drip lines, and other equipment” that “are enabling farm families to weather dry seasons, raise yields, diversify their crops, and lift themselves out of poverty” water expert Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project cautioned against reckless land and water-related investments in Africa. “[U]nless African governments and foreign interests lend support to these farmer-driven initiatives, rather than undermine them through land and water deals that benefit large-scale, commercial schemes, the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered.”
There’s nothing more American than apple pie—or its boozy cousin, apple cider. Thanks in large part to some enterprising apple farmers, hard cider is making a comeback, but it’s not the cloyingly sweet mass-market beverage you might recall from your college days. Call it a fruity offshoot of the modern craft beer movement: hard cider is going back to its roots.
The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
At the farmers market, you can meet the farmer who grew your carrots, talk to them about their growing practices, and feel confident that your food dollars are going directly to the farm. But the path coffee travels from farm to cup is much more mysterious. How can you feel good about the businesses you’re supporting with your coffee dollars and ensure that farmers thousands of miles away are receiving their fair share?
Urban agriculture has captured the imagination of many San Franciscans in recent years. Two dozen gardens and farms have sprouted across the city since 2008, and in 2011 the city changed its zoning code to permit urban agriculture in all neighborhoods. Interest in urban agriculture stems from its numerous benefits. City farming and gardening provides San Franciscans with vibrant greenspaces and recreation, education about fresh food and the effort it takes to produce it, cost savings and ecological benefits for the city, sites that help build community, and a potential source of modest economic development. But the city will not fully capture these benefits unless it takes advantage of the growing interest and energy behind the issue.
