Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
An intrepid new garden farmer has been asking me lately about the details of making hay. I can tell by his questions that he is very intelligent but has never experienced the culture of the hay field. Until now, it had never occurred to me how difficult the situation has to be for him. I was unceremoniously handed a hay fork about seventy years ago, and in a sense never let go.
It seems to me that there is a growing momentum of thoughtful debate over the realities of local food production versus industrial agriculture. A book review from Bloomberg news provided the inspiration for a needed discussion on this subject here this week.
What is Retail Supported Agriculture? As far as the North American local food movement is concerned, it’s not a concept that has yet been coined in any notable way. The Kootenay Grain CSA (community supported agriculture) project located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia is now changing that.
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-Solar Power from Space: Moving Beyond Science Fiction
-Johnson announces awards for ‘low carbon zones’
-The Cruel Cost of Clunkers
-How to Grow Democracy
-Bike-o-rama: A Roundup of the Best in New Bikes, Bike Infrastructure, Blogs, Books and More
-Climate Change, Drought and India’s Looming Food and Water Crisis
-Half India’s land degraded: agro-chemicals partly to blame
-Delhi trade talks face familiar foe as India’s farmers prepare to protest
-UK lags behind as global economy emerges from recession
-UN: Rich countries will suffer unless they help poor on climate change
-‘Job not done’, Darling tells G20
-Doha Round: it’s important to have some clarity on a road map
-Big stores counting the cost of ban on GM food
-Climate tipping point defined for US crop yields
-The promise and limits of local food
-Organic Farmers Seek Healthier Future
-U.S. farmers warm to community agriculture model
-In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths
-Brain changes may have led to Stone Age tools
-How cooking makes you a man
-Cogito ergo sum, baby
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– Droughts in Asia
– Quote of the Week
– Energy Stat of the Week
– Briefs
One “emerging consensus view”, even among politicians who continue rooting for economic growth if only to claw tax receipts for paying off swollen national debt, is that world oil demand will ceiling if not crater. Peak Oil has won converts, some of them even able to openly admit it is real, but mostly selling oil saving and oil substitution to consumers as part and parcel of the hunting down of the Evil Molecule called CO2.
The next case of $120 oil, assuming we get there before the industrial economy falls into the abyss, will be brutal for an already over-stretched American consumer. Banks are falling like dominoes on a mule cart over the bumpy terrain of declining energy supplies. When will the lights go out?
So there’s nothing new under the sun. Farming begins with small holdings and then slowly graduates to larger and larger units until it falls apart. Or starts with large holdings and breaks up into small ones and then repeats the cycle over and over again. Every generation must have its “back to the land” movement.
