Food & Water

Economic awakening: Corn can’t grow like money grows

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I don’t hear anyone explicitly suggesting that the culprit in our economic woes is money interest even though all of our major religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, insisted for centuries that interest on money was immoral. ALL interest on money was usury. And supporting that view, philosophers and writers from every culture and era cautioned over and over again the folly of borrowing money.

Local currencies, Transition Councils and Declarations of Food Independence: it must be the October Transition podcast!

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Here’s the second Transition podcast. The idea with these is that they will explore some of the stories from the month’s “Round up of what’s happening in the world of Transition” in greater depth. So, this month we hear from Brixton about the latest developments with the Brixton Pound, from the Wiltshire town whose Town Council just voted to become a Transition Council, and from the Yorkshire valley that recently declared independence from the global food system.

Occupy your life

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Someone asked “if you could say something to the Occupy movement what would you say?” Vandana Shiva flashed her brilliant and embracing laughing smile, a smile that hooks right into your heart and you can’t help but feel the connection. She replied: “I’d tell them, Occupy your Life.” She reminded us how Gandhi had the symbolic actions — sitting in protests — but with that he also had the cotton — the tangible actions.  Dr Shiva said that along with the protests, people need to grow food, to build connections within their communities, to make changes in their lives.

Restoring Food Hubs

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Today, Detroit’s Eastern Market, first established in 1891, is a revitalized food hub, returning to the historical practice of actively offering processing and aggregation support to small and midsize farmers, facilitating relationships between local producers and institutional buyers, and strengthening Michigan’s regional food system. Its evolution says much about the history of our food system and a transformation currently taking place across the country.

Book Review: Radical Gardening: Politics, idealism and rebellion in the garden

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The notion that politics only takes place in the voting booth or halls of state basically evaporated in the 1960s. We now know that political acts occur in a range of settings: in our neighborhoods, bedrooms, kitchens, and, yes, even in our gardens.

The biofuel grind

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When we enter the decline phase of conventional oil—likely before 2020—we will scramble to fill the gap with alternative liquid fuels. The Hirsch Report of 2005, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, took a hard look at alternatives that could respond to the scale of the problem in time to have an impact. Not one of the approaches deemed to be currently viable in the report departs from fossil fuels. But what about biofuels? To what extent can they solve our problem? We’ll dip our toes into the math and see where a first-cut analysis leaves us.

Occupy Absentee-Owned Farms

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I know something I would much rather occupy than Wall Street. I wonder if the typical young critic of the moneychangers realizes where the wealth that drives Wall Street comes from. How much of it, for example, resides in the land out here in corn and soybean country that is owned by wealthy people who have never set foot on it?

what is going down in my kitchen is going down in the world

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But the hands that write also stir, chop, mix and fold. They have learned in these cooking and eating out years to touch and feel and memorise the living fabric of the earth, the vibrancy of fish and fowl, the rough coats of seeds and bark, the soft down of peaches. These hands know what to do with sea urchins and dead hares. They have shopped in the markets of the world – Greek islands, South American cities, desert and mountain towns. They are smart, gentle, ruthless. Like everyone’s hands.

While Detroit may be singing the blues a new documentary reveals what is driving its progress

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Detroit was once a destination for car companies and youth trying to break into the music industry. Today, it’s now home to entrepreneurs looking to break into the urban farming business. In Detroit, a city that saw half its population move in the wake of economic collapse, many of the hopes of those who stayed behind hinges on urban farming.