Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Whatever carbon-management system the world adopts, farming methods will need to change, and the efforts of hundreds of millions of people will be necessary to get the carbon out of the air. We, the residents of the world’s industrialized countries, should not expect our lives to continue in much the same way.
Modern agriculture would be inconceivable without phosphate fertilisers – and it needs more and more of them. Experts warn of an imminent phosphorus shortage. But not Roland Scholz from the Institute of Environmental Decisions. For him, the main problems are the open phosphorus cycle and non-sustainable resource management. Scholz considers the ecological and social costs of the unsustainable use of the resource to be more problematic than the peak: ‘The environmental damage caused by the extraction and use of phosphorus is still greatly underestimated.’
-DIY Urban Design, from Guerrilla Gardening to Yarn Bombing (slide show)
-The antidote to apathy (video)
-“Sustainable Development vs Historic Preservation” Is A False Dichotomy
-Projects: Small is Successful (report)
Birds and their eggs have been part of our food chain for tens of thousands of years. In hard times, birds and their eggs were survival foods. In the not too distant future, chickens will be a pillar of survival and resiliency as we proceed into what we believe to be a looming energy descent.
Once the property of nobility, then a consecrated sanctuary with questionable links to a common dice game, then a cloister for nuns and a family base for a member of the judiciary, my home of fifteen years now owns me.
Knowledge stands at the beginning of everything purposefully created. It takes knowledge to build farms and machines, to build firearms, or to steward the land. Having knowledge often means having power. Inequalities in access to knowledge often lead to power-inequalities.
As we dig into history, we discover there is a much deeper answer to “why white rice?” Traders who exported rice demanded that it be shipped as polished white rice–which weighed less and stored longer and hence increased their profits–and further proliferated its consumption. Then, over the decades, the dominant elite culture defined brown rice as “dirty” and fit only for the poor; while white rice was seen as sophisticated and modern.
The resilience of our food supply is as much about the quality and diversity of our food sources as it is about how much we produce.
So, icecaps are melting, oil is surging and the economy is still in the tank. You’ve given up on Congress, you’ve lost faith in Obama and you aren’t impressed with what’s coming out of your statehouse these days. Why not plant a garden?
A non-profit organization in Oakland, Planting Justice, works to empower youth to resist the corporate-controlled and toxic industrial food system and become young leaders in the burgeoning urban food justice movement…Developing skills in critical thinking, community organizing, public speaking, and ecological entrepreneurship, these youths are changing the way they identify with the food they consume and becoming leaders to other students on their high school campus and in their after school programming.
When I read the passages in the novel describing one of the festivals of The Church of the Almighty Good Food, I imagined a Breughel-like painting, teeming with ordinary folk enjoying one another and sumptuous foods in the midst of a sea of cornstalks. I even imagined a whisper from gently undulating tassels, “Serve it, and they will come.”
History is being made in the corn market and the mainstream press isn’t paying attention. Corn prices hit an all time high last week. As you pull on your boots and head for the garden or fields for spring planting, what are your plans? Are you ready for some seismic changes in food prices? Do you feel too helpless to do anything much but keep on hoeing?
