Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This set of news reports from around the Asia-Pacific region discuss some persistent matters: the need for food security systems which also protect smallholder farming communities, stemming the tide of migration to towns and cities, recognising and encouraging womens’ participation in business and local administration, reforming land rights so that the marginalised (and particularly women) can use their ownership to advantage.
I enjoy challenging myself. I threaten to kick my own ass, and however it plays out, I learn about myself and usually expand my personal comfort levels. This week I challenged myself to eat from my yard for one meal each day I am home.
Lacto fermented sauerkraut will cure what ails you, tastes great, and the delightful smell will clear a room of normal people.
-Why We All Need to Demand Organic and . . . Worship the Worm (book review)
-Rooftop Gardens and Community Plots Welcome City Bees
-Enduring Farms: Climate Change, Smallholders and Traditional Farming Communities
-She yanks their food chains
What have Haiti’s recent calamities taught U.S. decision makers about foreign policy with regard to agriculture? Haiti imports nearly half of the food consumed there–and 80 percent of its rice, the national staple. In the past two years, the country has undergone two major shocks: the global spike in food commodity prices in 2008, and this year’s devastating earthquake. In both cases, the dearth of domestic food production, combined with the complete absence of rice reserves, translated to widespread hunger and misery.
When you think about it, a breakfast cereal is a bizarre product — there is nothing natural or normal about eating manufactured flakes and puffs created by giant machines in factories, shipped around the world and sealed in plastic for months.
In Africa and elsewhere, burgeoning population growth threatens to overwhelm already over-stretched food supply systems. But the next agricultural revolution needs to get local — and must start to see rising populations as potentially part of the solution.
I think that I have tried to grow just about every variety of every garden vegetable commonly on the market. Yes, I try new ones now and then, but I have been doing that for fifty years and by now I know what I want and want what I know. This is particularly true of muskmelons.
At a recent Saturday market, Mary Curley sat at her table, displaying at least two dozen varieties of herbs, fruits, and vegetables. At 70, Mary is the oldest of these African American farmers, and has the smallest farm among them, a quarter-acre. A beatific smile lights up her face as she recites the names of her organic offerings, urging customers to sniff and taste each one: Japanese orange, Thai basil, lemon grass, Cuban oregano, pineapple sage, and serrano, habanera, and banana peppers.
-Is Africa underpopulated?
-Zambia’s farming revolution poster boy
-Africa’s banking laws shut out the poor: Yunus
Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes ,and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.
In Europe and North America, eating fresh perishable produce out of season usually means hauling it in refrigerated containers from regions where it’s in season, or growing it locally in heated greenhouses…Although these greenhouses boast extremely high yields, the amount of fuel needed to heat them generally far exceeds the amount that would be needed to haul an equivalent amount of produce from a region where it’s in season.
