Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
He and the people in his church are part of the new “food hub” wave, although he didn’t call it that. He just wants to encourage the people in his church to start asserting their food independence. But instead of going the usual route of venturing forth and trying to teach the people how to grow food, Mike decided to ask the parishioners themselves how to go about it.
– Phosphorus cycle: A broken biogeochemical cycle (article in “Nature”)
– Food for thought – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
– Walmart and the Good Food Movement
What would a People’s Takeover require of us? Below I share some reflections on a summer of research into the bigger picture. And a few further questions!
For century upon century domestic animals have been bred with specialized traits suited to particular tasks or to live and prosper in specific climates or regions. Arguably these domesticated breeds are of significance equal to their brethren who live in the wild and just like their wild counterparts, many of the breeds are in danger of extinction. Indeed some breeds have already been lost.
The Bou Craa mine in occupied Western Sahara is one of the world’s largest sources of phosphorus, a vital component of the fertilisers on which much of the world’s agriculture, and global food production and food security, depends. For some time there has been concern about our reliance on a finite supply of phosphorus, and the implications of this for agricultural productivity, food prices and nutrition, particularly in developing countries. The term “peak phosphorus” has joined the term “peak oil” in the lexicon of 21st century scarcity. An article in this week’s Nature journal (Elser and Bennett, 2011) addresses the phosphorus problem …
More and more of today’s unemployed college grads would like to become farmers. But if they can’t get their own land, could they wind up at the bottom of a new family feudalism?
Grazing animals is not as easy as I thought at first for about the same reason that annual cultivation is not easy. There are nasty weeds out there, and more coming, that grazing animals won’t eat and which can’t be controlled by mowing either.
-Battered by economic crisis, Greeks turn to barter networks
-OSU Urban Farming Study: What’s the Best Way to Turn a Parking Lot into a Garden?
-Earth Sangha announces “Rising Forests Coffee”
-Bath and West Community Energy launch their first public share issue
One of the most common complaints about the industrial age is its constant and seemingly ever-growing use of sweeteners. Whether it was cheap sugar (and rum) in the early 1800s, saccharin in the early 1900s, or high-fructose corn syrup in the late 20th century, sweeteners have had a bad—but tasty—reputation…In a local context, however, sweeteners are extremely important. Many of the local fruits that contain Vitamin C, for instance, are difficult eating unless sweetened…Sugar is also very important in preserving food, where it creates a hostile environment for bacteria as well as a delicious treat.
– The Transition movement: Today Totnes… tomorrow the world ( UK Independent)
– The Rise of Urban Biking (The Nation)
– The Resilient Library
– Feeding the world requires “a new paradigm” (Swiss ag conference)
Wes Jackson believes that shifting from fragile annual monocultures to more hearty perennial grains grown in a mixture of plants (polycultures) is the key to a truly sustainable agriculture. Instead of a brittle industrial agriculture dependent on fossil fuels, Jackson’s research team is working to build a resilient agriculture modeled on natural ecosystems.
With the health of our soils and our own bodies at stake, Jackson says, we can’t afford to assume old approaches can cope with coming crises. Because humans like to resolve ambiguity, we reward researchers who appear to do that within existing systems — such research may be right but irrelevant, if the real problem is at the level of the whole system. Solving individual problems within a system that can’t be sustained actually creates problems.
I am pleased to say, after thirty years of sharing our barn loft with twenty to forty bats every summer, that I have never once been attacked by a bat, let alone contracted rabies, nor has any farm animal gotten rabies or suffered any kind of poisoning from bat manure, nor I have ever seen a sick bat, nor has a bat gotten tangled in my hair (well, I used to have hair). How these myths continue despite so much expert literature to the contrary never ceases to amaze me.
