Food & Water

Sail Transport Movement Enters U.S. Mainstream

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The last month has seen exciting U.S. sail-transport developments. Three encouraging events indicate that the nation may no longer be falling behind Europe in nurturing a critical form of renewable energy. In northern Europe at least four well-established players are operating on a significant scale, and preparing to build more ships…Due in part to the constant promotion of sail power by the Sail Transport Network and participating sailors since 1999, the U.S. is finally rising to the occasion. The occasion is none other than the recent historic global peaking of easy-to-extract-and-refine conventional crude oil, and the accelerating destabilization of the Earth’s benign climate.

Hopeful Harvest: Food and agriculture as a foundation for peace in Northern Afghanistan

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This apparent disconnect between the symptoms of a failed state and the remedies suggested by what is seen to constitute its healthy counterpart makes it difficult to imagine a way out of failed-statehood. We contend that it is necessary to rethink what a failed state is, to understand, at a rather more practical, grassroots level, the drivers of failed or successful societies.

Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal

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This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.

Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal

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This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.

The most wonderful (gardening) time of the year

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Growing a garden during the regular summer season here in Oklahoma can be a slog of uncomfortable heat and drought. 114+ temperatures, weeks without rain…painful. Without our reliable perennial fruit trees, some of us would grow little at all. Many Oklahoma farmers and gardeners have even begun muttering about giving up completely on the summer garden. But the fall season? Now, that’s a different story.

Canning Tomatoes 101

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We do a lot of canning here, especially with tomatoes. We harvest several hundred pounds every year with most of it being preserved. This year I’ve been getting a lot of questions about canning and tomatoes seem to the most popular.

Review: Too Much Magic by James Kunstler

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…Kunstler has a new work of social criticism titled Too Much Magic, his first nonfiction book since The Long Emergency came out in 2005. The book is an inquiry into a skewed, delusional perception of reality that Kunstler thinks has become “baseline normal for the American public lately.” Americans, he says, have been led astray by the incredible technological advancements of recent times. We’ve come to believe that any problem we face is solvable—as if by magic—with the application of some new technology.

Regenerative Adelaide

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An urbanizing world requires major policy initiatives to make urban resource use compatible with the world’s ecosystems. Metropolitan Adelaide has adopted this agenda and is well on its way to becoming a pioneering regenerative city region. New policies by the government of South Australia on energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, zero waste, organic waste composting, water efficiency, wastewater irrigation of crops, peri-urban agriculture, and reforestation have taken Adelaide to the forefront of eco-friendly urban development. Working as a thinker in residence in Adelaide in 2003, I proposed linking policies to reduce urban eco-footprints and resource use with the challenge of building a green economy.