Earth’s limits: Why growth won’t return – food
In addition to water, people need food for their very existence. Thus food is also essential to economic growth.
Food & Water
Urban Homesteading
It is ironic that the Dervaes–homestead project originated long ago in a desire to access GMO-free food. Now they have become, in effect, the GMO of the L.A. Green Scene. They are attempting to patent the “seed,” so that no one else is allowed to touch it without paying royalties. Just like Monsanto, they are sic-ing their attorneys on people who are working publicly in good faith to do the right thing.
Addiction and recovery as a partner for Transition
One could argue that the principles common in addiction recovery hold much wisdom for a transition process. To truly “recover” from an addiction one must go through the transition of recognizing first that one’s way of life is not working—the compulsion with the behavior or substance is getting in the way of one’s relationships, health, future well-being, and growth. In other words, one recognizes their desire to consume is insatiable and destructive, and a change is needed.
Food & agriculture – March 10
– The unusual uses of urine
– NYT on Peak Coffee: Heat Damages Colombia Coffee, Raising Prices
– Decline of Honey Bees Now a Global Phenomenon, says UN
– US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl
– The world food crisis” the squeeze on purchasing power
Hitching farm implements to an older tractor
As all of you know who have spent the better part of your working life hitching and unhitching stuff, when you are alone you must bring the tractor to a dead stop at the exact right place, get off, and because you never are in the exact right place, pull the implement forward or the tractor backward the inch or so necessary with brute, hernia-causing strength. No tractor yet made, even on perfectly level ground, will stay put exactly where you stop it for hitching.
UN report supports sustainable agriculture – March 9
– UN: Eco-Farming Feeds the World
– Eco-Farming Could Double Food Output of Poor Countries, Says UN
– NYT’s Mark Bittman: Sustainable Farming Can Feed the World?
– Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food
Beyond food miles
A local diet can reduce energy use somewhat, but there are even more effective ways to tackle the problem. Single-minded pursuit of local food, without consideration of the bigger picture, can actually make things worse from an energy perspective.
Women managing farms and forests in South Asia
For millions of rural women and their families in developing countries, rights to agricultural land and forest resources are critical determinants of their well-being and their security against destitution. Not only can such property rights enhance individual welfare, they can also strengthen livelihoods for the most vulnerable and help conserve forests that are of global importance as carbon sinks and sources of biodiversity.
Mardi Gras Reflection: Food’s Impact on re-building New Orleans
In an odd sort of way, Hurricane Katrina helped to make New Orleans an incredible laboratory not only for understanding the role and importance of a city’s food system but for recognizing the importance of food as an essential tool for community building.
Farm prices, food prices, and biofuels
It’s worth noting that the energy content of the human food supply is about a sixth of the energy content of the human fuel supply (about 86 mbd of liquid fuels, equivalent to somewhere in the neighborhood of 120-130mbd of ethanol). This is the core problem with converting food to fuel – we are taking from a small pool to try to make up for deficiencies in a large pool, and we will have a much bigger effect on the level of the small pool than the bigger pool.
The future is organic: But it’s more than organic!
Organic will be the conventional agriculture of the future, not because of wishful thinking or because it is the right thing to do, or because of some universal truth revealed from on high.
Gertrude Jekyll meets edible landscaping: The ornamental edible border
Ok, you know about edible landscaping – you’ve replaced your burning bush with blueberries and your spireas with elderberries. You’ve trained that grapevine over the arbor. Now you are eying that space on your front lawn where the perennial border is (or should be or used to be or is in your head). You want flowers. You need flowers because they make you happy. Maybe you have to grow flowers there if you grow much of anything but grass, because of neighbors or zoning laws. Can you grow an ornamental flower garden that is totally edible? Yes. Yes, you can!
