Food & Water

On The Prince’s Speech: The Future of Food

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The content of “On The Future of Food” (a speech given in May of 2011 by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at Georgetown University and recently published by Rodale Press) shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the Prince or sustainable agriculture. The two have been connected since at least 1985, when HRH converted his farmland to organic, wildlife-friendly practices…That he is so personally knowledgeable on the subject—as well as being in a position to influence discourse and policy at such a high level—gives him some clout to tell us what is wrong in the food system and what can be done about it.

OrganicLea: Professional Radicals

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OrganicLea stands out as an inspiring urban food project that grows everything: food and communities. While many sustainable and food-focused programs are limited by the fact they only have volunteer staff, Organic Lea’s vision to create jobs provides a practical transition from hobby radicals to “professional radicals”. If the food sector and organics are not automatically a promotion of equality, inclusion, mutual aid, and cooperation, then OrganicLea definitely is.

Future of food in Japan

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One concern is how import-dependent Japan might cope with the advent of the peak of oil production and a possible oil price crunch. Paul Stevens at Chatham House, one of the world’s leading think tanks, argued in 2008 that an oil crunch could occur when the oil price goes over US$200 per barrel with severe macro-economic impacts….While other reports place the peak of world oil production at a later date between 2015 and 2020, the timing is academic when considered in the context of whether Japan would have the time to respond effectively in terms of reorganizing its entire food system.

The impacts of biofuel production in developing countries

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In recent years African countries have enjoyed interest from abroad, thanks in part to a great amount of available land apparently ideal for cultivating crops for providing food security and for the production of biofuels. However, insufficient legal protection for the local population often leads to the signing of contracts that deprive these people of their source of subsistence…And if the locals are in fact consulted at all on the matter, they can typically count on a campaign of misinformation from the government.

Yet another look at winter grazing

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Over the years I have become very intrigued with the idea of grazing livestock year-round in the north, even though I have found as many negative things to say about the idea as positive. My thinking has been that wild cud-chewers and horses make it through winter just fine unless they become over-populated, so why not cows and sheep?

China beefs up alternatives to industrial agriculture to improve food security

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China’s agricultural development in recent decades has contributed to the country’s increase in food security and reduction in poverty. However, the country continues to face persistent rural poverty in fragile agroecological regions, increasing socioeconomic inequality, feminization and aging of the agricultural workforce, environmental degradation, and erosion of biodiversity…Farmers, led by women, have organized new local organizations for technology development, seed management, and market linkages.

A food system that needs citizen Occupation (and farmers!) – Feb 28

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-Before the Food Arrives on Your Plate, So Much Goes on Behind the Scenes
-Big Food Must Go: Why We Need to Radically Change the Way We Eat
-We are the 2 Percent: Occupy our Land, Occupy our Food
-“American Meat”: Not Just Another Food Documentary

Zurich: Adventures in urban relocalization

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As the guest last week of Zurich University of the Arts I set the following task to a group of sixteen masters students: “Create the plan for a social harvest festival that will reconnect Zurich with its natural ecosystems and grassroots social innovators.”

The idea was to demonstrate, in practice, and at a city-wide scale, how to combine the low-energy design principles of permaculture, with the metabolic energy of social innovation.

Cold comfort. Review: The Winter Harvest Handbook

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These days, looking to future resilience often means looking backward, to when families and communities did more things themselves. Prepping old school style is the key to peak oil not hitting quite so hard in your own life. That’s why vegetable gardening needs to become a four-season activity for resilience-minded preppers.

Triumph of the generalist: Reading the farming/homesteading encyclopedias

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These overview books on starting up a smallholding/homestead/small farm/urban sustainable oasis are often the first books any of us come to, precisely because we need that encyclopedic breadth so badly – eventually we may need to know more about growing melons or delivering a calf or butchering a rabbit or canning pickles – in fact, most of us end up with specialist books on all these things. But at first the best of these books give you a picture of the whole range of the work you are entering into – and that’s what a lot of us need.

How do you find a million more farmers?

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Let’s not be shy about the matter; the dominant picture of agriculture in this country is pretty grim. Set upon the foundations of unequal land distribution, the expansion of neo-liberal policies into agriculture since the 1950′s have accounted for a halving of agricultural employment, the systematic industrialisation of farming techniques, the consolidation of larger farms and the tightening of corporate control on food markets. We have been left with an economy in which new entrants to farming can expect to pay up to £10,000 an acre for land but receive less than 10% of the money spent on food by consumers.