Food & Water

Real food right now and how to cook it: Grapes

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Grapes are a special fruit. From inspiring myth (think Dionysus and Bacchus) to sustaining WWII troops in the form of raisins, grapes have been involved in so much of human history. Although I grew up eating lots of raisins and grapes, as I imagine so many American kids in the 70s and 80s did, I didn’t really value the fruit until I was old enough to appreciate wine. The magic that happens between the grape harvest and the first pour into the wine glass is something thrilling – and it’s amazing to think that the beverage we let stain our teeth is (essentially) the same beverage that the ancient Persians, Romans, Greeks and Egyptians drank.

Sharing for Survival Chapter 4: Policy Packages

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A viable mechanism to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions, such as Cap and Share, is a necessary part of any coherent action plan to avoid catastrophic climate change, and end fossil fuel dependence. There are many other aspects to the global economic and ecological crisis, though, which have to be dealt with through complementary and synergistic measures. Any element of a coherent package including Cap and Share could, on its own, be counterproductive. This chapter explores some of the main issues that need to be addressed in tandem with capping fossil fuel CO2.

Fires in the field

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If you want to see the landscape of hell painted prettily on a farmland horizon, watch a field of corn on fire. It is hellish enough, in my view, to see corn fields stretching away in every direction from sea to shining sea with no houses, barns, trees, fences, grazing animals or any other sign of human habitation in sight. But when a curtain of fire is rushing across this land of the free and home of the brave, the effect is quite as terrifying as watching a big slice of the Great Plains suddenly disappear before the onslaught of a dust storm.

Heat and drought ravage U.S. crop prospects—Global stocks suffer

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High temperatures have combined with the worst drought in half a century to wreak havoc on American farms and ranches. Some 80 percent of U.S. farm and pasture land experienced drought. The average temperature across the contiguous United States from January through August 2012 was far higher than in any past year, a full 4 degrees Fahrenheit above the twentieth century average, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The summer of 2012 was the third hottest on record. Only the summers of 2011 and 1936–the latter during the Dust Bowl–were warmer.

Land and resources – Sept 25

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-Land grabbing and food sovereignty in West and Central Africa
-Africa: Land, Water and Resource-Grabbing and Its Impact on Food Security
-Antonio Trejo, Honduras rights lawyer, killed at wedding
-Chinese villagers protest at slow progress over land dispute
-The global need of non-violent struggle around land rights: a path for change?

Biodiversity in Kanazawa: Autumn’s lesson

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Various traditional industries rely on the water resources of the region, from paper, gold leaf manufacturing and silk dyeing, to sake and soy sauce production. The arrival of autumn marks the start of many of the processes associated with these industries, as it is during the cold months of the year that water is clear. Biodiversity has supported Kanazawa’s traditional industries at all levels: through the water-regulating function of the forests, through the direct provision of plant materials, and through the workings of the microscopic diversity of organisms involved in the processes of fermentation central to much of the local food culture.

Using the old farm to sell the new

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Historians like to say that we can’t “go back” to the past and that certainly is true in a general sort of way. But as a matter of fact, in farming circles, we are always “going back” one way or another. In every generation there are people who decide that “going back” is a way to escape what they dislike in the present and there are a whole lot of people, now and historically, who dislike what is going on in agriculture.

The no-waste food preservation plan

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40% of all food produced worldwide, and nearly half of all food produced in the US goes to waste. When you break down the realities of food waste, you see that in the developing world, much of the waste is due to lack of ability to preserve food — no refrigeration means that sheep you slaughtered is waste if all of it isn’t eaten or dried or otherwise preserved immediately.

In the Global North, however, the vast majority of food is wasted not in the field, but in the process of getting to our homes.