Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How do those raised in a culture of separation from nature, with abundant exosomatic energy from fossil fuels and vast transportation networks, develop the knowledge, skills, and new culture that draws from the past while preparing for a very different future? Chris Smaje helps us out.
If you know people who are raising livestock in low impact and low energy ways that enhance your local food system, then hold tight to them because they are probably pioneers who will be needed as we enter new worlds of agrarian localism.
By building the local food economy and adapting to place, nothing less than a new indigenous foodway is emerging. I am watching rapid transition take place before my eyes – and it’s beautiful.
And I would submit that it is the idea behind the plow — the idea that humans are so specially superior that they are allowed to cause widespread death and destruction in the name of satisfying their wants — that is the actual root of all our culture’s problems.
My book is a polemical critique of George Monbiot’s book, Regenesis. In it, I make the case for agrarian localism in the face of his derision for the same.
We humans are beings grounded in the earth, or ‘humus’; when we move a herd across ground, it’s described as ‘transhumance’.
Drought conditions are sneaking up on us much more quickly, more often than in the past.
A new book from water expert Peter Gleick urges a rethinking of how we use, manage and value one of our most important resources.
On this episode, Nate is joined by Daniel Zetah, who practices regenerative agriculture on his family farm in Minnesota. Daniel shares his experiences in becoming aware of the global challenges we face and his journey back to his family farm, where he has been instrumental in naturally cultivating the land back to life again.
A problem I have with a lot of ecomodernist solutions to present problems, Monbiot’s included, is that they focus too much on why occupations like farming are an economic fantasy and not enough on why occupations like corporate law are. From that mistake, many other errors flow.
We Don’t See Where Stuff Comes From. We grow up staring at screens without ever seeing the coal plants that power them, speed down motorways without ever visiting the oil derricks that fuel them, and eat the equivalent of several animals a year without having to wrestle them or smell blood.
Ultimately, fixing the water crises in Flint, Jackson, the Navajo Nation, and other places will require systemic investment at every level.
