Solutions – May 22
The suburb-eating robot
Intent shapes environment, environment shapes life
Pedicabs a hit in Bellingham
Rob Hopkins on permaculture (interview)
Dmitry Orlov details the Collapse Party platform
Food & Water
Blaming speculators – May 21
Are commodity traders bidding up food, fuel prices?
Are pension funds fueling high oil?
Senate takes on oil, food speculators
Gambling with the futures (primer)
Food crisis – May 21
Brazil threatens to nationalize fertilizer mines
South America’s industrial-ag powerhouse eyes rainforest potash deposits
Forget Saudi peak oil – worry about Saudi peak grain
IMF “cure” for food crisis also a cause
Hunger prompting desperate acts
Food & agriculture – May 21
Where industry once hummed, urban garden finds success
Your friend, the kitchen
High gas prices drive farmer to switch to mules
Gene Logsdon: Garden and small farm skills – hoemanship
Water: world crisis
“Water will be the oil of the 21st century.”
(Mammoth collection of links and excerpts).
Food & agriculture – May 20
Fat chance – policy vs personal
Sharon Astyk: Won’t we prioritize energy for agriculture?
World hunger, agribusiness and the food sovereignty alternative
Farmer-hunter-gatherer
We’re still sending out the cultural message “we’re different from the old agrarian roots” even though that’s become painfully obvious. The difficulty, of course, is that we may need to be rather more like the old people.
Food & agriculture – May 19
Growing pains for farmers
World’s poor pay price as crop research is cut
California farm exporters face shipping squeeze
Fears over Victoria’s food security
Climate change threatens French truffle
Confusing, arbitrary rules hinder local farmers
Dysfunction – May 19
Flying cars
The Surge (in lame excuses)
When cars compete with people for food
Fertilizers – May 18
Perfect storm for fertilizer prices
‘Nitrogen cascade’ – threat to ecosystems
High cost of fertilizer makes livestock manure attractive
Solutions & sustainability – May 18
Clare Short: Birmingham should become a transition city
A family farm in the midst of suburbia
No wonder Iceland has the happiest people on earth (their secret revealed)
Oil, food and agrotherapy
It is a good time for an increasing number of people to return to the multiple benefits and pleasures of growing at least part of their own food by gardening and farming. In addition to satisfying the need to eat and drink, farming can also help deal with depression, passivity, and other forms of psychological suffering. It can help treat both the body and the soul.
