Food & agriculture – Oct 7
– Costa Rica will pay the price for cheap fruit
– Farm-to-School’s Teachable Moment
– Ellen Thrives On Pinkerton and Hopkins’ ‘Local Food’
– Haitian Farmers: Growing Strength to Grow Food
Food & Water
Picking blackberries without bleeding to death
Carol has stories to tell about picking blackberries. For her family in Kentucky, wild blackberries were a cash crop. Her mother would sally forth into the puckerbrush with her children every summer to pick them by the gallon. They sold the berries along with other produce from garden and orchard at local farm markets. The blackberry money was used to buy new school shoes.
Vegetable / herb seed swap
Seed swaps are lots of fun. People gather to exchange seeds, but at the same time they swap garden stories, garden tips, and generally connect with each other around food gardening.
Our silent green friends – Oct 4
– Drinking your garden with EB founder Adam Grubb
– One in Five Plant Species Face Extinction
– $5,000,000,000,000: The Cost Each Year of Vanishing Rainforest
Europe and China – Oct 4
– French towns swap rubbish trucks for horse-drawn carts
– Swiss Solar boat heads on around-the-world voyage
– Zero Emissions Race – 30 days around the world using renewables
– Does (European) Social-Democracy Have a Future?
– The Soot Road: Travelling along one of most polluted energy corridors on Earth
Food and agriculture in a steady state economy
A steady state economy would move away from control of food by transnational corporations and toward an increased number and diversity of small and medium-sized farms, and healthy rural communities.
Gardening is about more than vegetables
“A thing is right when it tends to strengthen the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Water – Oct 1
– Human Impact on World’s Rivers ‘Threatens Water Security of 5 Billion’
– Groundwater Depletion Raises Likelihood of Global Food Crises
– NYT: Water Use in Southwest Heads for a Day of Reckoning
– Sharon Astyk: The Water Fountain
Editor’s picks: September 2010
Articles that we thought were significant this month.
What are species worth? Putting a price on biodiversity
When officials gather for an international summit on biodiversity next month, they might look to remind the world why species matter to humans: for producing oxygen, finding new drugs, making agricultural crops more productive, and something far less tangible — a sense of wonder.
Too many farmer’s markets?
I never thought I would see this happen: throughout the local foods movement, there are complaints now from the farmers saying that there are too many markets and marketers. That means less money for each farmer, the ancient problem that never goes away.
Civilization’s foundation eroding
Civilization depends on fertile soils. Ultimately, the health of the people cannot be separated from the health of the land.
