Home Soil
Soil is not dirt. It is not a pile of fine-ground rock and biological detritus. It is not even a home for mycelium and microorganisms, annelids and insects, roots and burrowing chordates. It is the sum of all those things living together.
Soil is not dirt. It is not a pile of fine-ground rock and biological detritus. It is not even a home for mycelium and microorganisms, annelids and insects, roots and burrowing chordates. It is the sum of all those things living together.
In this brief review, I’ve just picked out a few strands from Simon’s rich and informative narrative – I’d warmly commend anyone interested enough to have read this far to get themselves a copy of the book, where they’ll find much more to entertain and inspire them.
The re-establishment in public discourse of a Welsh food culture, with its long history, its ingredients and methods, provides the possibility of a rooted baseline for the future of food in this country; open to change, but aware of its provenance.
It is time for the United Nations and its various agencies to recognize that its top-down organizational structure is not suited to address our myriad ecological crises, and rather use its influence to advocate for, and allocate its resources to support, land custodianship for the millions of indigenous communities keeping alive the knowledge of how to live within the bounty of what our mother Earth provides.
Driven by fossil fuels, powering new technologies, society (and the global climate) has been completely changed. But like all celebrations, that process is arguably coming to an end; and like all the best parties, those who have had a really good time don’t want it to stop!
One of the key learnings of 2021 is the necessity to think AND act in a systemic and holistic way – a manner that builds bridges rather than breaks them down, or questions existing ones.
I needed to speak to people whose ancestors had experienced the slaughter of their bison herds, the enslavement of their entire family, the brutal exploitation of migratory farm work, or incarceration at the hands of their own government while their crops were left to rot.
Landskap, therefore, is the nature we have together, where we live. The word expresses that we are part of the landscape and that the landscape is part of us.
Instead of prioritizing growth, we must aim for rapid reduction in overall energy usage, with an emphasis on equity—both equity between the rich and poor within nations and globally.
As the Ukraine-Russia war continues, a special plenary session would bring together a broad range of critical actors in the global food system to advance integrated solutions to protect the food security of the most vulnerable.
For both Claire and her husband, shepherding in the mountains is a lifestyle choice rather than a career. They endeavour to live this vocation in a manner that respects and upholds ancient traditions that are being lost in modern society, bridging a path between the old and new.
This excerpt from the second edition explores some of the lessons learned in the contemporary sustainable food movement, a movement that – although incomplete and imperfect – has devoted considerable effort to understanding what it means to feed ourselves without harm to land, people and community.