Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Ken Meter, one of the top experts on community food systems in the US, discusses how local food networks thrive and how they can help strengthen economies. Meter is president of the Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis. Carl Etnier hosts.
-Here’s something about North Dakota worth imitating
-The Other Plot to Wreck America
-America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels
-Can Farming Save Detroit?
-The Visual Du Jour – What If…?
-Economists start to consider that money can’t buy happiness
-Peak oil demand funds
The top ten sustainability stories of the past decade was my last post. What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through 2019 will be one day looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.) the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.
In former times slaughterhouses, bakeries, breweries and dairies were small, numerous and more or less evenly distributed across the country. Today they are big and located in only a few places. They are hubs with many long transports going to and from them. This is a consequence of the relationship between the cost of energy versus the cost of labor.
This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.
Leaves are one of nature’s most miraculous creations. They tie it all together. They rise from the ground, reach to the sky, and bring life to the Earth. Leaves do many good things—manufacture food for trees and other plants, use the sun’s energy to transform carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, and decompose water (H2O) into oxygen and hydrogen.
KrisCan visits Eric Toensmeier in his Holyoke, Massachusetts home garden that was transformed from a bleakly barren backyard into a thriving oasis of year-round, productive perennial fruits and vegetables.
Attitudes toward food change constantly, and perfectly edible food that is shunned in one era might be highly prized in another.
Relax, fellow farmers and gardeners. From now on everything is going to come up roses and sunshine. A magical and mysterious soil has been discovered deep in the Amazon (roll of drums, please) that will double and triple your yields and grow tomatoes as big as basketballs.
Energy Bulletin ran this excellent piece from the New York Times on a crisis facing Mongolian Goat Herders who are attempting to deal with unstable world markets, climate change and overgrazing. I was fascinated by the clear way that the author of the piece lays out the vicious circle that they’ve entered into, and I was struck by how useful an example it is of the kind of ecological vicious circle that we face all the time…
Oatmeal is a healthful food and now there’s an easier way to grow and process your own. The problem has always been the hulls which grip the groats so tightly that getting them off is difficult.
Humans must create paradise or they cannot live on the planet Earth. Paradise here is described as a human community that lives in perpetuity and in peace on one place on the earth, over many generations.
