Climate & environment – Feb 5
California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns
Forecast: doomed! Stephan Faris’s book is a grim reality check
It’s Getting Wicked
Food & Water
Food & agriculture – Feb 5
Slow food: Have we lost our appetite?
Our love-hate relationship with the Red Cedar tree
Program helps future farmers find land
Food, Finance and Democracy in Crisis
The 2009 29th annual Ecological Farming Conference kicked off on January 21 in beautiful, rainy Pacific Grove, CA with a provocative, pointed, timely, and at-times hilarious keynote address on "Food, Financial Stability and Democracy in Crisis" by Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, a new critically acclaimed book about the causes and consequences of global food inequity.
Farms heal – agrotherapy
After farming for most of the last sixteen years in semi-rural Sonoma County, Northern California, and being raised partly on our family farm in Iowa, I have come to understand that agriculture can serve many functions, in addition to producing food, fibers, and beverages. Some farms–especially non-industrial small family farms–are places where working the Earth can be good for body, mind and soul.
Food & agriculture – Feb 2
‘Honey, they shrunk the groceries’; Prices go up, sizes go down
Amazon rainforest razed so cattle can graze
Landless Worker’s Movement (MST) turns 25
Wealthy countries gaze hungrily at Canada’s prairies
Protest – Feb 2
Riot? If I were 20 years younger I would take to the streets
Thousands protest across Russia
Greek Farmers Clash With Riot Police
Food & agriculture – Jan 31
Astyk: Food security as a cottage industry
Industrially grown produce shows long-term nutritional decline
Zimbabwe’s starving millions face halving of rations as UN cash dries up
Reality Report: David Holmgren and FutureScenarios.org (Part 2)
The Reality Report interviews David Holmgren. David co-invented permaculture over 30 years ago and has been a practitioner and teacher ever since, both at his home in Australia and as a consultant around world. This second installment covers four “energy descent” scenario groups that correspond to potential variation in the severity of both peak oil and climate change. Scenarios are also viewed as choices, with certain factors, such as social scale and resource availability, influencing the descent path.
Reality Report: Ben Gisin of Touch the Soil magazine
Ben Gisin is co-founder and publisher of Touch the Soil magazine, an agricultural magazine promoting resilient agricultural practices. He speaks with Jason Bradford about the crumbling industrial agricultural system and its close relationship with the global economy.
Scenario 2020: The Future of Food in Mendocino County
A presentation by Jason Bradford originally given to Leadership Mendocino, Nov. 14, 2008. Dr. Bradford presents as if from the year 2020 on the history of Mendocino county after an energy crisis, describing the rapid changes that followed.
Peak Moment 126: A School Garden Brings Learning to Life
Come along on a tour with team-teachers Glenda Berliner and Jeralyn Wilson, as they show us their elementary school garden bearing many fruits. It’s an important part of the curriculum: children make mason bee boxes, grow colonial medicinal plants, learn of other cultures, and put science to work.
Peak Moment 123: Cultivating a Suburban Foodshed
Landscape architect Owen Dell has a vision: transforming suburban neighborhoods into shared “foodsheds” with food-bearing and native plants, and even chickens. Neighbors can start by finding edible plants already growing in their yards, maybe remove fences, plant what works best in each location.
