Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
it’s the end of the world as we know it (…and I feel fine) (1)
Probably few saw this meltdown coming. We have come to view human progress as a given, and an ever growing economy and living standard as an entitlement.
New York state author, blogger, and homesteader Sharon Astyk discusses her new book, A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil. Astyk sees the energy shortages of peak oil hitting us and our food system now, and she argues that US food security depends on 100 million of us starting to farm in the near future. Four Vermonters also describe part of what they are doing to move Vermont toward much stronger local food systems.
-Urban Farming ‘Mushrooms’ During Recession
-Season Extension Techniques: Cheap and Dirty Options
-Finding fulfilment through farming
It’s quite a spectacle to behold. Here in Boulder County–Colorado home of the nation’s first carbon tax and the first city to offer property-based financing for solar installations and energy retrofits–we’re watching our County Commissioners wrestle with a proposal from six local farmers seeking official approval to grow Roundup-Ready GMO sugar beets on county-owned open space land.
In this episode Crop To Cuisine explores several areas that are helping us understand and make decisions about the agricultural landscape. Adam Avery tells us about their team bike ride from Boulder to Durango, and how breweries are doing more than making great beer within their communities. Bill Meyer from the USDA Statistics Service explains the first organic agriculture census. Cindy Torres of the Boulder County Food & Agricultural Policy Council helps us understand the GMO v. Non GMO argument. And Michelle DaPra shares the USDA’s efforts to better understand local food systems.
“Next to clean water, phosphorus will be one the inexorable limits to human occupancy on this planet” wrote Bill Mollison in Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual more than 20 years ago. It is that important that we design phosphorus recycling into our food systems. Phosphorus is an essential element for growing crops and no porridge, chocolate bar or cherry jam can be made without it.
The photo of stunted corn tells why grain farmers don’t like trees in their fence rows. Don’t like fence rows at all, in fact. The trees suck the moisture away from crops, as you can see. But what’s going on here? The corn in the other photo, just across the fence, growing the same distance from the same trees, is tall and healthy. Why aren’t the trees robbing moisture from this corn?
For someone who believes, as I do, that decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel will eventually make the transportation of food over long distances economically unfeasible, the phrase “local food” acquires a special meaning beyond the usual lifestyle implications. It’s less about maintaining moral purity and more about whether we’re going to have enough to eat.
G8 Summit: Feed the Hungry or Fuel Hunger?
G8 Calls for Decisive Action to End Hunger, Recognizes Role of CAADP and AGRA at L’Aquila Summit
U.S. working group on the food crisis statement on the G8 in L’aquila, Italy
San Francisco was born at the beginning of the oil age, and the city has flourished during an era in which fossil fuels became the foundation of our economy and society…Today, the City and its inhabitants are utterly reliant on fossil fuel energy: 84% of the energy consumed in San Francisco comes from oil and natural gas.
