Nature’s matrix: Linking agriculture, conservation and food sovereignty

An important book argues that conservationists who focus on creating nature preserves are undermining their own cause. To truly protect biodiversity, environmentalists must support the global struggle of peasant farmers for human rights, land, and sustainable agriculture. In any discussion of biodiversity and species extinction, someone insists that overpopulation is the problem. More people equals more farms equals less wilderness equals more extinctions. Life is a zero-sum game: you can have people and farming OR wildlife and biodiversity, but not both.

Farmers, workers, consumers, unite! New visions in food justice

Since its founding in 1996, the Community Food Security Coalition has been the leading voice for people of color and the poor in a food movement that often marginalizes them in favor of well-heeled “foodies.” This summer, the coalition announced that 2012 would be its last year of operation. The announcement left those of us in the food movement reeling. Although the timing was not deliberate, it seemed fitting that a gathering about the future of the food justice movement, Food + Justice = Democracy, had been planned to take place just months after the coalition’s announcement.

Low Carbon Cookbook – the foragers

One of the greatest gifts of Transition is rediscovering the simple joys of doing seasonal things together – cooking, cycling, swimming in the sea, having a picnic. They bring sense and meaning into everything we do. Nothing though is quite as delightful and satisfying as foraging – going out into the wild territories and finding stuff to bring home and eat.

Swedish eco-village hosts role-play of life after peak oil

In early October, the eco-village, Änggärdet, Sweden, hosted two days of Live Action Role-Play (LARP) along the theme of life 2016-2027, post peak oil and post economic collapse. Players got the opportunity to explore what various scenarios would be like, including being commaned into a work detail bu the military to harvest the last remaining potatoes by hand, and by joining a self-organised, worked-by-hand co-housing combi-farm.

Make Me!

No, that’s not the cry of a spoiled child. It’s food, calling to you! Anyone can grow, gather, or make a lot of their own food. We do it on four fronts – we garden, we catch a lot of fish, we raise chickens, and we make some of our favorite foods from scratch. What have we learned along the way?

Food and Revolution

Three guests. Rob Stewart, Director of movie “Sharkwater” and now his latest “Revolution” – is the ocean dying? An international media briefing by Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute about rising food prices & his new book ‘Full Planet, Empty Plates’. Wes Regan on urban farming in the poorest neighborhood in Canada.