Food & agriculture – August 8
-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
Food & Water
Towards an Energy-Positive Food System
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.
Food production and nature: The deadly paradox of a class-riven society
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.
The Mighty Dehydrator
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.
One billion already hungry as deeper food crises loom
Despite growing enough food to feed to entire world, almost a billion people are now hungry — one in seven of the global population — and, according to Oxfam International, conditions are getting worse and the number of acutely malnourished children has risen for the first time this decade.
HOMEGROWN Life: More on the Drought
Out here in the Farm Belt, it’s hard to do much other than beat the same drum again and again (and again). It’s hot. It’s dry. Nothing is growing. We’re running out of water. And there is no sign of change on the horizon.
Food & agriculture – August 3
-New San Francisco legislation will jump-start urban farming
-Soil Microbes Help Save Plant-growing Input Costs
-Help Us Weave the Food Web!
The return of the enclosed garden
The interesting and entertaining reactions to my recent post about destructive wildlife in the garden encouraged me to ponder the situation more closely. Pondering things closely always leads me to weird ideas. I am thinking about the possible return of the walled gardens of Victorian times. How do you know they didn’t become popular in the first place to keep out wild animals including humans?
Summer Solar Cooking
Cooking with a Sun Oven is never easier than in the summer months, when the sun is intense and the days are long. Temperatures inside my Global Sun Oven can easily reach 350 degrees within around fifteen minutes, and so I can cook a wide range of dishes – sometimes several in one day.
Joel Salatin: We Are the Solution, as Well as the Problem
Joel Salatin returns as a guest to discuss “ecological participation” – methods by which humans can create a much more resilient landscape than current mass agricultural practices allow for.
Less Dreaming, More Digging
How many people could we employ if we radically change the way we farm?
Against the Grain
What’s not to like about cutting the costs of a farm enterprise—and boosting its revenues? That, in effect, is Wichner’s pitch for the “beyond organic” farmland management system he plans to scale.
