Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
– In New Food Culture, a Young Generation of Farmers Emerges
– Peak Phosphorus: Is there enough for biofuels at scale?
– The Future is Organic (but it’s more than organic) – report from plant scientist
– (GMO) Alfalfa and Our Future
Why then don’t complex agricultural societies, or the even more complex civilizations that they sometimes evolve into, rely on ecological complexity to solve problems? Because by their very nature they are committed to ecological simplicity. Their size, population density and social complexity are in most places the result of grain monocultures.
This essay documents our five years as a “neorural” family, cultivating corn, beans and squash with organic methods on a small scale. This essay will perhaps inspire those who don´t have access to land, but nonetheless want to make themselves more self-supporting in the production of their food. Written primarily for the Latin-American context, this article honours the “cultural memory of a sustainable pre-industrial lifestyels, still present in the older generations. [Outline of the article in Spanish, photos, links to original and PDF]
Este ensayo documenta la historia de un proceso personal y familiar. Cuenta de nuestro acercamiento, como familia “neo-rural”, al cultivo de maíz, frijol, calabaza, con métodos orgánicos, en campos de cultivo a pequeña escala. Compartimos las experiencias que hicimos durante estos cinco años, estableciendo vínculos de trabajo y colaboración, con una familia campesina en la bioregión donde vivimos. Quizás este relato pueda servir de inspiración para quienes no tienen acceso a una tierra, pero si tienen la inquietud de aprender y hacerse más responsables de la producción de sus alimentos.
Creating an Energy Descent Action Plan and/or the intentional relocalisation of a community will raise a lot of questions. How much arable land surrounds the settlement, how much food, fuel and fibre might it produce, what productive role might back gardens, allotments and new urban market gardens play? How much energy infrastructure is needed, and how much could realistically be installed? Failing to ask these questions will hamper attempts to think strategically about relocalisation.
-The Invisible Food Crisis
-Food prices reach record highs
-Climbing fuel prices trigger alarm
-Caught in the Food Pirates’ Trap
Global warming has likely already caused changes in the world’s climate by delaying monsoon seasons, causing less summer precipitation and creating longer breaks between rainy periods. One group of women in southern India is turning to traditional farming practices for immediate and sustainable answers to address these water problems.
Resiliency demands something quite different than specialization and diligent professionalism. Resiliency calls for an equally amazing and profound rise in competence on the part of citizens, consumers, eccentrics, dissenters, minorities…
Africa is being measured for its land profitability potential. So are other regions in the political South. This process is part of the new structural agri-food adjustment programmes that are already in place in the developing South. It includes agri-investor friendly new industrial policies, the disinvestment by and withdrawal of government equity in profitable public sector enterprises, financial sector ‘reform’ that ushers in private banking and asset management.
I think RR alfalfa is a big mistake for another reason. Weeds are rarely a problem in alfalfa cut for hay, so who needs the stuff. Alfalfa seed is expensive enough as it is. If biotech alfalfa seed goes up horrendously in price like biotech seed corn has, who would want to buy it?
What we see is fairly simple – and incredibly complicated. The intertwining of markets, of energy and food, tied by biofuel production and national policies, and the fact that we are not in control of either one. And that when food and energy prices spike, the world is transformed.
What do we economists have to learn from Wendell Berry? Many things, but here I will mention only two. First is a definitional correction regarding the basic nature of our subject matter—exactly what reality matters most to our economic life and why? Second, what mode of thinking does this reality require of us in order to understand it as well as possible, without seducing us into spurious substitutes for honest ignorance?
This is a peak oil story. Or maybe a story about what happens when peak oil activism collides with peak oil itself. It is a tale about that punch in the stomach announcement that reality has arrived.
