Food & Water

Sauerkraut

by

In all its forms, [cabbage] remains one of the best crops for the Irish climate, as for similar climates like the Pacific Northwest, but it grows in a wide variety of climates. It’s a famous staple here in many of its forms, the basic vegetable of many dishes. Amazingly, though, few people we know here make sauerkraut or kimchi, methods used in other parts of the world to preserve cabbage, make it easier to digest and to give it flavour. You can make sauerkraut very easily at home, and it will be much tastier and more nutritious than the canned variety.

Population: one planet, too many people? (report)

by

Population: One planet, too many people? is the first report of its kind by the engineering profession. Unless the engineering solutions highlighted in the report are urgently implemented then the projected 2.5 billion more people on earth by the end of this Century (currently there is 6.9 billion) will crush the earth’s resources.

Human manure shops are a hot business in North Korea

by

As I said in my book on this topic, this would all have made perfect sense to F.H. King, whose remarkable 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries, goes into great detail about how Asians at that time produced more food per acre than we do now with all our modern and very expensive fertilizers except maybe on our best raised beds. Manure, animal and human, was their main fertilizer. Chinese farmers had to lock and guard their vats of manure to keep it from being stolen.

How we designed our solar greenhouse

by

In good ol’ permaculture fashion, we set out to enhance sectors and conditions that would improve our growing season (sunlight, heat) while minimizing those that we considered detrimental (cold, hail, frost). We quickly determined that a passive solar greenhouse was just what we needed and we set out to design one for our backyard.

Challenging convention: The Sanjukta Vikas Cooperative in Darjeeling, India

by

British owners abandoned their tea estate at Mineral Springs near Darjeeling shortly after India gained independence in 1947. The few hundred families living there took control of the land, living a mostly subsistence lifestyle until about ten years ago when residents formed a dairy cooperative that delivered goods milk and yogurt to Darjeeling. Now SVC grows organic teas on the former plantation that are marketed by Massachusetts-based Equal Exchange under a Fair Trade label.

Let’s talk about bees

by

Our bee problem is quite the topic of conversation these days–at social gatherings, in meetings, over coffee. I could say and have—for example at Christmas dinner when apologizing for my not-quite-stellar pumpkin bread—that last summer the CSA grower from whom I get my produce planted five hundred pumpkin plants and only got three pumpkins (so I had to buy canned, rather than processing my own). No pollination, he thought. And just the other day an acquaintance mentioned that friends who live in a tony suburb north of Chicago had, also last summer, had their own pollination troubles in their vegetable garden. Why? she wondered.

Urban permaculture – 10 ebooks about sustainable city strategies, community and guerrilla gardening

by

In urban situations, space is limited, there may be little or no access to land, and various regulatory restrictions when it comes to gardening or backyard animals. We want to share some of the concepts that people have used in urban settings which allow them to circumnavigate these obsticles. Below is a list of some solutions practiced by various groups in cities across the nation. It is a mix of approaches, ranging from gardening to co-parenting, going across of aspects of sustainability.

Book review: Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Windup Girl”

by

It’s not the apocalypse. And it’s certainly not the Death Star or the planet Tatooine. But The Windup Girl is a compelling vision of our industrial world as it could be in a low-energy future. Paolo Bacigalupi’s techno-political thriller imagines how, in the time after peak oil and economic collapse, global trade could return via airships and GMOs.

Doing something about it – Jan 16

by

– Storytelling as Organizing
– Words Matter: How Media Can Build Civility or Destroy It
– Healthy Village Model Improves Community Health and Builds Local Green Economy
– It’s Time to Return to a Robust Urbanism
– Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?

Food crisis, reports, and solutions? – Jan 14

by

-World hunger best cured by small-scale agriculture: report
-The futility of trying to fight these food and energy price shocks
-Transylvania: could this ‘lost in time’ land be the future of European agriculture?
-Can We Feed 9 Billion People?
-EU organic food push hailed by African farmers
-Best practices for organic gardeners
-The Great Food Crisis of 2011

Crop to Cuisine: Vermont invests in big sustainable agriculture

by

Vermont officials are serving up a new plan to boost the state’s food and farm economy. The Vermont Farm to Plate Investment Program was created in 2009. Its goal is to improve the state’s food system and make it easier to get healthy local food. The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund has spent the past 18 months developing a strategic 10-year plan which they say will meet those goals. They’ll release it to lawmakers today.