Food & Water

Maybe Farming Isn’t Supposed To Make Money

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Talk about heresy. What if food production should not be part of either a capitalistic or a socialistic economy. The first commandment of agriculture states that you must put back into the soil the fertility you take out of it. That being so, the only real profit from food production is how good the food tastes and how well it sustains health and well-being.

Meeting Energy Decline Part-Way – Potatoes?

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Before 1999 I had never grown a thing in my life except for chia-pets. I then bought a house in North Carolina which had an existing smallish garden of cherry tomatoes, spinach and blueberries, which over the next 4 years, I turned into a 360 square foot garden with numerous geometric shaped raised beds. This introduction to gardening was more of an art form to me – I didn’t care about the end result so much. Fast forward 10 years and I have a larger, more serious garden…

The recession is dead … long live the recession!

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The world’s first peak-oil recession has come to a close, according to third-quarter numbers invented by the federal government. Apparently dumping trillions of dollars onto big banks, insurance companies, and automobile manufacturers interrupted the plummeting descent of American Empire. The stock markets skyrocketed expectedly. Predictably, so did the commodities markets.

The great biofuels debate – Oct 27

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-Biofuel Displacing Food Crops May Have Bigger Carbon Impact Than Thought
-Biofuels rather than electric cars to meet renewables target
-Tanzania Suspends Biofuels Investments
-Who says it’s green to burn woodchips?
-Carbon advantage of biofuels may be overstated

Deconstructing Dinner: Sustainable Agriculture at Fleming College/The Local Grain Revolution XI

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Deconstructing Dinner is excited to share with our listeners an amazing new agriculture program for new farmers being offered at Fleming College in Lindsay, Ontario…The Sustainable Agriculture program appears like an ideal way for any unexperienced and interested new farmers to be introduced to many of the critical pieces necessary to launch a profitable and sustainable farm business…Between October 15-18, 2009, a fleet of 11 sailboats made their way from the city of Nelson to the Creston Valley of British Columbia to once again pick up a cargo of locally grown grains and transport it back to Nelson.

Peak Moment 153: How Do I Invite You to Grow Food?

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Jenny Pell’s infectious enthusiasm will sweep you up into creating a future that’s beyond sustainable — to one that’s “additive.” This lively permaculturist suggests that you belong where you live and get (re)connected to your “chain of inputs and outputs”. She invites us to to regain skills, especially in food production, and to participate in creating abundance, which is “the only way forward, the only way for the human family to survive.”

Gardening in a Changing Climate

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When I worry about climate change, I often think first about human consequences. But the line between human losses and nature’s losses is pretty fine – literally a tree falling in the forest question. That is, if the sugar maples that turn my region into a blaze of red, the hemlocks that overshadow my creek disappear, who loses me or nature? The only answer is “yes.”

Crop to Cuisine: October: Beer, Health & the WFP

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Crop To Cuisine goes global with Oktoberfest in Palestine & The 2009 World Food Prize. We also take on Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a report connecting diet and breast cancer. Finally we hear from the CDC about their newly released findings on “state by state” fruit and veggie consumption. All that and more.