Rural Realities | Testing Grounds for Wellbeing
The countryside is a nice place to live. Farmers are happy. That’s what we heard on the ground in the cooperative farms we visited in France in 2021 and 2022.
Food & Water
‘Regenerative’ Agriculture is Disunifying, and that is Okay
It is time for “regenerative food systems” to radicalize or get out of the way, to step aside and allow human-scale, disruptive, actually diverse and localized collectives to emerge and feed the world, one community by one community at a time.
Silage and the silence of the corncrake
Dublin, Ireland. We are seeing the first good days here, leading up to the golden days of mid-summer, and I’ve been talking to elderly friends here in the Irish countryside about what they used to do when the sun shone. The answer, of course, was that they made hay. When farmers heard the cry of … Read more
Kaiao, Elua
It is makahiki, the beginning of the rains
and through this falling fertility
the garden crying out
with a deeper, a darker gingery voice
to these young gardeners…
Reconnect With Beans – Take Our Food Power Back
To quit the existing model, we need to have bigger ambitions, collectively. We need more of us.
Agroecology must open up to additional dimensions of transformation
Agroecological research has proven that agroecology and local food systems bring a range of goods, including making better use of resources, spending less on packaging and materials, using less transport, and health benefits. Why then is its implementation not supported more broadly?
Guardian of Temaca: “I had to see with my own eyes”
On November 10, 2021, the agreement to avoid flooding the three towns was signed, representing a historic victory for these communities and for all those who fight to defend water and territory.
First the doom, then the optimism: a Small Farm Future reader poll special
My Plan B is no hey presto. It’s a numbers game. Slowly try to build a second, low-tech, distributed world within and around the edges of the mainstream world.
Home Soil
In fact, we don’t seem to realize that this living soil is the necessary foundation of a garden. Soil is not dirt.
The Rebirth of Campesinado in Mexico
I discovered the campesino world in the years 1970-71, while in charge of the Tropical Biology Station of the UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico], in Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz.
Can the CAP and Carbon Farming Coexist?
But can a Europe-wide Carbon Farming program coexist with the CAP? In this article, we explore the similarities and contradictions between the two.
Rabelais in Russia, or the man on a chair in a hat
I’m beginning to embrace the notion that there are hierarchies we cannot simply transcend through history, and that they must be honoured. But, per Rabelais and Bakhtin, that doesn’t mean we can’t invert and relativize them, make fun of them and insist on keeping them at arm’s length while we get on with the more important business of the people’s life and livelihood.
