Deep Thought – Sept 25
Earth Democracy – notes on Vandana Shiva
The old future’s gone (audio)
Ordinary human poverty
Food & Water
Solutions & sustainability – Sept 23
New system could help avert collapse of fisheries
Peak climate (audio) Part 1 is Dr. Peter Ward on past extinctions & violent climate change, Part 2 is Julian Darley, founder of the Post Carbon Institute, on how to live past the energy crisis
Isle of plenty
Organic Money
Surrounded by shade trees and gardens, about 200 people, a surprising number for such a rural setting, stood around in little knots talking spiritedly about subjects that all came under the heading of Home Economics: local food; natural medicine; home-based alternative energy; home birthing; home schooling, even, get this, home churching.
Food & agriculture – Sept 19
Instead of eating to diet, they’re eating to enjoy
US university campuses ban cafeteria trays in effort to go green
Australian farmers go green as petrol prices rise
Plants in forest emit aspirin chemical to deal with stress
An unlikely marriage: organic farmers and genetic engineering
Albert Bates on peak oil, relocalisation and why the hippys were right all along
What is so wonderful about Albert’s talk is the incredible story he tells about what can be achieved when people work together to make something happen. The story of hundreds of middle-class city hippy kids turning up on 1000 acres of poor farmland in Tennessee and having to work out how to grow food, build houses, make electricity and so on, is a great story for our times, showing what the combination of circumstance, passion and necessity can draw out of us.
Food & agriculture – Sept 17
Food banks finding aid in bounty of backyard
Don’t put all your eggs in one food basket: experts
Scientist says ag costs continuing to rise
Future of Food director Garcia on ‘making soil sexy’
How to grow a four-season garden – Part 2
How to grow food year-round, with special attention to extending the growing season for the fall and winter.
The minimum tools for small-time garden farming
One of the chief advantages of the small garden farm based on grassland farming with pasture and crop rotations is that only a small portion of the total farm is cultivated, and of that cultivated part, only an even smaller portion needs to be cultivated at any one time. To ascertain your power and tool requirements on such a farm, you do not look at total acreages, but rather the number of acres that necessarily have to be cultivated in any one day.
Survival 101: They don’t teach that in most colleges, and there’s a dilemma
Can a young person risk going to college these days?
If you’re 18 and college-bound, you may be skilled at computers and driving a car; know how to take the second derivative of a quadratic equation in calculus and have learned about electron orbits in chemistry; and may be able to discuss Shakespeare and “To Kill a Mockingbird” intelligently. But do you know how to kill and dress a chicken, or find and prepare wild edible plants in every season, or keep a goat healthy so it produces milk and meat?
Food & agriculture – Sept 13
Phosphorus: Running low of an essential fertilizer?
UK’s sodden farmers struggling with a changing climate
Lessons from Cuba
Employing insect farmers
Solutions & sustainability – Sept 12
Transition Towns in the Guardian
… in the Christian Science Monitor
Thou shalt go green (evangelicals and PO)
On the transformative potential of community-scale food production
Wherever I lay my hat
Terra Preta: Biochar and the MEGO effect
“Terra preta” refers to the rich, fertile artificial soils found in the Amazon. In this post I’ll have a look at modern day techniques to produce terra preta (often called biochar or agrichar) which have the potential to increase soil fertility, generate energy and sequester carbon all at the same time.
