The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century
Let’s not confuse “agriculture” with “agrarianism” says Steven McFadden in his new book, The Call of the Land. Then we might think more deeply about our relationship to the earth.
Food & Water
Why oil matters more than rubber
In an interconnected global world, revolutions in far away countries can cause strategic realignments or economic problems that will affect us all.
Peak Moment 188: Your personal baker — A bakery CSA
Watch baker Jen Ownbey whip up a batch of zucchini bread while she talks with Janaia about doing what she loves. Every week, members of her bakery CSA (community supported agriculture) get a handmade, local, mostly organic, and even personalized box of breads and bakery desserts. Jen talks about getting started, selling wholesale and at growers markets, plus the joys, lessons, and challenges of running a solo business.
Overcoming systems stupidity
A very large part of the reason why contemporary American society so often defeats itself by chasing after fantasies of limitless growth is a learned blindness to the behavior of whole systems. It’s hard to think of a challenge more necessary or less popular than learning to measure our expectations against the realities, and especially the limits, of natural systems; the Archdruid suggests some resources for the job.
Mid-East unrest could increase global phosphorus threat
Two Australian experts in global phosphorus have warned instability in the Middle East and North Africa could threaten world food security, due to the high proportion of global phosphate rock reserves in the region.
Wood by the cord yields lots of discord
Sitting by the woodstove, I am warmed twice when I read that a cord of shagbark hickory equals 250 gallons of No. 2 oil in heat value. I don’t know what heating oil costs right now, or what that equals in gas heat or electric heat, but it sounds like my wood is worth real money today.
Life within the soil
Doug Weatherbee, a Soil Foodweb Advisor and owner of SoilDoctor.org, talks about the biodiversity that lies beneath our feet. Soil is alive!
Genetic diversity lost with the damage of Egypt’s deserts gene bank
The effort to maintain the world’s biodiversity has taken another hit. In the chaos surrounding the political unrest and public uprising in Egypt, looters have badly damaged the country’s Desert Research Center in El Sheikh Zowaid in North Sinai. The center houses the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank (EDGB), and—according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust—equipment has been stolen and the cooling system has been damaged.
Health and food security
Both health and food security are fraught with expectations at social, academic, and governmental/regulatory levels. Both are states of mind as well as physical conditions. Absent either, the human organism eventually dies.
In novel approach to fisheries, fishermen manage the catch
Prior to Ostrom, many economists believed the commons could be solved only through privatization or top-down state control. In her 1990 book Governing the Commons, Ostrom found examples of a third way: self-organized enterprises — groups of fishers, farmers, or ranchers — who voluntarily organized themselves in order to share the short-term sacrifices and reap the long-term rewards of their sustainable stewardship of common resources.
Farmer by farmer, an organic transition
According to Gil: “Only about 2 percent of what we eat comes from outside the farm: salt, some cooking oil, spices. That’s it.”
Oil, food, and the wealth of MENA countries
This morning, I’ve been catching up on some reading about the protests in Egypt and Algeria, following on the Jasmine Revolution that is in process in Tunisia. Clearly, the reason for interest is wondering to what extent is there any risk of these events spreading into the big oil exporters, which could cause extremely large disruptions in the global economy. This is probably unlikely, but not so inconceivable that serious observers aren’t starting to at least think about it.
