Food & Water

A loyal customer

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This is a post about shopping and a conversation we’ve been having for three years now in my Transition initiatives about relocalising food culture in East Anglia. Because when you’re discussing supermarkets you are really discussing the industrialised food system and the producerist society we live in. It’s a massive topic and one we will return to in our Diet and Environment Week in April, when I’m hoping to write about disentangling ourselves from Big Ag on the micro-level. Right now I’m looking at the macro-level and how there is life after supermarkets. Really.

Power to the people; citizen and energy independence

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I’m a great supporter of community energy generation, but I want to talk about another form of energy, one which I consider to be an essential component of our future energy economy, and perhaps more importantly, one which could affect our fundamental sense of wellbeing.

I’m talking about food: human fuel.

It’s official. We’re looking for land…

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Yes, I know. Secretary Vilsack called for 100,000 new farmers. The 2008 Farm Bill appropriated $75 million dollars of funds for Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Programs to provide education and training to get new farmers started. And of course, we have Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food and inspiring advocates like USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan leading this movement to get more people farming. Not to mention the growing market and awareness surrounding local foods. And yet, to be actually in it, planning a farm as a born-and-bred city kid without ties to the land (more specifically a specific piece of land), it feels so so so far away.

Knowledge, technology, and the politics of rice

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The dominant focus on advanced technologies and higher-level politics, I argue here, has limited value for understanding crucial elements in processes of technological change that take place in society, therewith touching upon key democratic values. This is illustrated with introduced changes to rice cultivation. Technological change is often associated with innovation.

Occupy the food supply: Construction or protest?

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This February 27 [was] “Occupy the Food Supply” day. It reflects a longstanding call from food activists nationwide to “fix our broken food system.” With 50 million food insecure people in the US, an epidemic of diet-related diseases, a “dead zone” the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico (caused by fertilizer runoff) and a steady stream of E.coli outbreaks from industrialized food, “fixing” the food system seems a reasonable–and urgent—demand.

Solo In The Silo

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Farmers like to sing while they work because they think no one can hear them. They especially like to sing on the tractor where the motor noise improves their singing by drowning out the raw edges of their voices. They also think the motor drowns out their renditions from the neighbors’ ears but just the opposite is true. Their hearty wails carry better than the motor noise and scare cows and neighbors several hundred acres downwind.

Peak Moment 208: Sail Power Reborn – Transporting Local Goods by Boat

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“We are revitalizing an ancient form of transportation … using just the power of the wind and the tides … to move goods and people,” says skipper Fulvio Casali. In their CSA (community supported agriculture), the Salish Sea Trading Cooperative uses nearly no petroleum to transport organic produce and other goods from the north Olympic Peninsula to northwest Seattle…Come on board with cofounders Casali, Kathy Pelish, and Alex Tokar, who are patiently redeveloping the skills and infrastructure for the return of “a whole fleet of sailboats blanketing Puget Sound” in the post-petroleum era.

Japan’s Green Renewal? After the Disasters UN Tour

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I’ve returned from a sobering United Nations-led tour of six tsunami-damaged communities and two radiation-impacted cities in Northern Japan. The obvious conclusion: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is forcing Japan to go green, including the launch of a new renewable energy national feed-in tariff that starts in July. Meanwhile the governor of Fukushima, Yuhei Sato, told us that renewables will be the “key factor” in the revival of his cesium-laden prefecture.