Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
There is something more mystifying about buzzards to me than the sight of them. They are almost as ubiquitous as robins, with a range from the southern tip of South America to far up in Canada. Even though they are awesome to behold, humans for the most part give them scant attention.
David Little of Little Organic Farm has had to adapt to water scarcity in Marin and Sonoma Counties, where most farmers and ranchers rely on their own reservoirs, wells, and springs, making them particularly vulnerable in years with light rainfall. Through a technique known as dry farming, Little’s potatoes and squash receive no irrigation, getting all of their water from the soil.
In response to a European Union directive to divert waste from landfills, local governments across the continent have had to come up with ways to meet the target goals or else face large fines. In France, the microscopic town of Pincé (population: 206) has come up with a particularly creative and logical solution: Backyard chickens for all.
-Demand for water outstrips supply
-Jordan’s Crippled Water Resources Protected by Security
-Drought dries up stretch of Platte River, slows barges on lower Mississippi
Letting food sit at room temperature and become colonized by airborne microorganisms runs counter to everything we’re taught about food safety. But without this guided decomposition that we call fermentation there would be no bread, cheese, tequila, or kimchee.
Fewer than 5% of all Americans drink raw milk. Yet, the question of whether Americans should be allowed to drink it at all is one of the hottest controversies between foodies and public health officials these days.
While the whitetail offers many lessons, this essay focuses on the lesson they offer about diet. No, this is not an essay on being vegan or even vegetarian, it’s much deeper than that. A thoughtful glance at our modern food system suggests we’ve forgotten much of what the whitetail knows about sustainable food systems. My goal in this essay is to start us on a path of remembering, so that we can build an energetically sustainable food system that can feed and nourish us far into the future. We’re far from this ideal today.
This, a doorway in West Africa’s Elmina Fort, is a Door of No Return. It is the last part of Africa you would touch if you were a slave being led from the dungeon to a waiting ship.
If the logic of the industrial system is based on profit, the logic of real food is founded on respect and balance. Real food isn’t opposed to profit, but it is opposed to profits that aren’t shared fairly with those who work the hardest to feed us. The Door of No Return represents what’s we’re up against: a global industrial food economy 500 years in the making that exploits both people and land.
To keep from becoming too depressed over the drought, I try to find lessons to learn from it, like trying not to be envious when rain falls on nearby farms but not ours. Two occurrences in my pastures suggest a teeny bit of optimism, but they run contrary to the way I usually think about pasture farming. That is to say, both occurrences involve plants whose names up to now have been hard for me to say out loud without prefixing them with cuss words.
-Avant Gardeners Awake!
-India’s Drought Highlights Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation
-Worst Drought Since 1956 Getting Worse; One-Fifth of U.S. Has Extreme Conditions
-Food Machine
More than 50% of counties in the United States are now officially designated “disaster” zones. The reason given in 90% of cases is due to the continent-wide drought that has been devastating crop production. 48% of the US corn crop is rated as “poor to very poor,” along with 37% of soy; 73% of cattle acreage is suffering drought, along with 66% of land given to the production of hay.
The ramifications of the drought go far beyond what happens to food prices in the United States.
I started dehydrating food out of simple necessity. I needed a fast and easy method to preserve the hundreds of pounds of peaches I get from my two peach trees every year. However, I soon became a food dehydration fan, searching out foods to dry to see how they would taste. This year my goal is to stop buying fruity lunch snacks for my son, who loves the dried peaches, bananas, apples, pears, cantaloupes, and even the tart plum chips that I make for him.
