Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Sometimes the simplest ideas carry with them, when thought through, such a powerful taste of how the future could be that they are quite irresistible…The idea is a simple one: rather than breweries in London buying their hops from wherever they can source them (sometimes as far afield as New Zealand), people across London grow hops in their back gardens, on their patios and balconies, allotments and community gardens, which are then used by local brewers.
– Peak people: The world’s losing its workers
– Monbiot: Is protecting the environment incompatible with social justice?
– Film review: The Forgotten Space (global trade)
– The Entropy of Capitalism & Urban Ag: Interview with Robert Biel
Want to grow food and live the sustainable lifestyle but lack the space? Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living, by Rachel Kaplan with K. Ruby Blume, a glossy bible for self-sufficiency in the city, will have you tearing out your driveway to sow a garden, and diverting gray water to irrigate it. The book’s beautifully presented and amply illustrated projects are all geared toward typical city-sized lots, and interspersed with case studies of actual homesteads and working urban farms, like the two-acre rooftop farm in Brooklyn, where greens grow amid rooftop vents.
-Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France
-The Corn Ethanol Lobby’s Land Grab
-Ohio could get specialized middle, high schools on farming
-Composting For Kids Is More Fun With Wrigglers
Unless you suffer from an overactive bladder as many of us do, you may find this essay a bit on the crude side. But nevermind, you will get there too eventually unless you are lucky. In terms of overactive bladders, there is an advantage to living on a farm that rarely gets mentioned, even though the “fall out” from it is quite significant for society at large. Farms provide owners with a private place far from any bathroom where they can relieve themselves.
-Urban Farming Takes Hold in NYC
-The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City [report]
-Sydney is buying back the farms at last
-Breaking through the myths: New book seeks to redefine urban farming [interview with authors]
-Urban ag before it was hip
-New urban farming structure breaks ground
The local food movement is one of the great trends to hit the country over the past decade as more people head for farmers markets, join community-supported agriculture groups (CSA) and cooperatives, shop at farm stands and U-picks, sponsor farm-to-school programs and demand local food in their neighborhood grocery stores, school and restaurants. What isn’t widely known is that the federal government, some big corporations and a variety of non-profit and small business organizations are stepping up to encourage the growth and viability of a local food system in order to give people of all income levels access to local food that is healthier, safer and fresher.
As declining energy sources become more evident and food emergencies become more commonplace, governments will be looking to universities to find BIG solutions. Along with the hope of BIG solutions comes BIG money.
Permaculture may soon be looked upon as a potential big solution. So as we stand today on the threshold of increasing interest in permaculture, let us take a moment to discuss the potential pitfalls that come with the big money.
-Is Agriculture Sucking Fresh Water Dry?
-The water footprint of humanity [report]
-UAE bans export of groundwater
-Permission granted for Britain’s first amphibious house on banks of Thames
Call me nerdy, but I think planning and zoning is fascinating. Give me a project proposal or zoning code, and I gladly immerse myself in land use regulations, zoning jargon and mapping. So when the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Mayor’s office held a kickoff and visioning meeting to rezone Boston for urban agriculture on Monday night, I was sitting front row, pencil in hand!
Outrageous, snarky, “madly engaging,” bileful—these are a few of the terms that have been used to describe author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. But he’s actually a great deal more than these things, as anyone who’s really come to know him, even if only through his books and Internet postings, can tell you. His most personal writings reveal a human, vulnerable, wonderfully versatile, cheerful side that few people know exists.
Even if we buy certified organic or fair trade marked products it is still very hard to avoid long and large retail chains which contribute to the pressure to industrialise and exploit human and non-human alike somewhere along the line.
How can we combine local, fair or ethical, and organic together in a way that at least has half a chance of caring more for human and non-human alike?
