Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Unfortunately, the extremely simplistic narrative that plants are good and animals are bad has been given far too much prominence in the public debate. For sure, industrial livestock production has a number of serious flaws, but so does industrial crop production.
Every time you plant a seed, you are declaring independence. Every time you repair a toaster, you are voting against disposable culture. Every time you generate a kilowatt-hour on your roof, you are disarming a dictator.
There is a new energy among our younger citizens to seek a more meaningful life in the country. Now is the time to take advantage of their new-found passion to live and work in a rural community.
From 2018 to 2020, the top four seed and agro-chemical firms controlled 60-70% of the global pesticides market, and 50-60% of the $45 billion global seed market. How did this happen?
There’s nothing much we can do about this world-as-it-might-be symbolic capacity we have, simultaneously humanity’s blessing or genius and also our curse. Writing, farming and so on were not the cause of our malaise but the result of it.
As long as water is treated as a problem to be drained rather than an ally to be welcomed, it will abandon us when we need it most and strike when we are least prepared.
Almost one hundred years later, Smith’s original ideas for planting a two story agriculture remain inspired—planting crop trees on challenging and depleted land. Trees can do most of the heavy work when it comes to feeding the inhabitants of our planet and repairing our land.
In arid and semi-arid regions, retaining rainfall where it falls is not an ecological luxury. It is a prerequisite for long-term water security, climate stability, and social resilience.
Farmers, following a bodhrán deftly drummed by Talamh Beo’s Fergal Anderson, brought themselves and their produce from their farms, telling a little of their stories of who they are, what they do, and how they do it. They stood front and centre, and it centred us too.
The garden is a profoundly simple setting for reconnecting with the earth, with one another, and with ourselves.
What if, in Algeria, water were no longer seen solely as a scarce resource to exploit or a threat to control, but as an ecological and economic capital to preserve and develop?
Ah well, the urgency of staving off as best I can the disaster capitalism that Philip Loring mentions keeps me going, even if it feels like a dispiriting and unequal battle sometimes. Cheers!
