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Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street
Martin Wainwright, The Guardian
A Lancashire town is experimenting with using traditional floral displays, including hanging baskets and herbaceous borders, to grow slightly less colourful but more practical greens.
The idea taking shape in Clitheroe is to replace flowers with edible vegetables and offer a modest “pick-your-own” service of plantings to anyone passing by.
The most striking feature will be three-tiered flower/vegetable structures in the centre of the town, if a motion put forward by councillors gets the go-ahead later this month.
Exponents say the idea is symbolic of the local determination to highlight the risk of food shortages and climate change.
The plan is also being promoted in neighbouring Rossendale, which includes the towns of Haslingden, Rawtenstall and Bacup, and could see them adorned with red-flowered runner beans or purple-sprouting broccoli. The area has a strong tradition of allotments, recently bolstered by fruit and nut tree planting in public places by green enthusiasts…
(12 Jan 2010)
Permaculture Design is for Disaster Relief, Not Just for Gardens
Maddy Harland, Permaculture Magazine
Daryl Hughes, Bangor, UK wrote to us today with a plea to tell the world via Permaculture Magazine about the growing applicability of permaculture solutions to natural disasters. This makes total sense. We started seeing permaculture design applied to refugee camps in Macedonia, Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Dave Clark worked with aid agencies encouraging the building of more sustainable settlements for refugees. Others, like Max Lindegger of Ecological Solutions in Australia, took ecovillage design skills to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami to great effect and rebuilt communities to an ecological standard with many carbon saving devices and designs.
When you get masses of dispossessed people without infrastructure or homes you get an excess of untreated sewage, polluted water systems and great risk of waterborne diseases like cholera, a critical lack of food not only in the short but medium term, a lack of shelter and cooking facilities. Deforestation escalates as wood becomes a primary cooking fuel. There is also heavy metal and other forms of pollution arising from collapsed infrastructure.
What can permaculture offer? All the low impact techniques like hygienic compost toilet design, blackwater and greywater recycling are obvious. Then the provision of low energy devices like rocket stoves and solar cookers is vital. These cost little and can be made out of old tin drums and satellite dishes. They reduce the need for wood and protect the natural environment. Then there is the planting of instant gardens and planning of sustainable urban and rural agriculture. If we take a leaf out of Cuba’s book we can see that not only are organic polycultures desirable; they work well in both town and country. Next then can come the micro-generation systems for energy that are far more resilient than large scale coal or nuclear plants. God forbid we build more of these, not only for atmospheric carbon from the former, but also for the risk of nuclear leaks in a world that is increasingly knocked by natural disasters. Give power back to the (little) people, as well as developing larger scale renewables; it is far more resilient to natural disasters.
…Some are calling for a Permaculture Relief Corps. Whatever catchy name we give it, the idea is that the range of solutions permaculture already uses can help people affected by disasters to meet their immediate and long-term needs, such as quick construction of composting toilets to improve sanitation. I am not sure to what extent this already happens with the main aid organisations, but many people find the idea of a Permaculture disaster response team inspiring…
(18 Jan 2010)
Sharon, the bounty!: A review of Astyk’s “Independence Days”
Jennifer M., ethicurean
Ever since the idea of going locavore, or eating local on 100-mile diets, tiptoed into the mainstream a couple of years ago, more people have chosen to support their local farmers markets and to eat fresh food in season. The old chorus continues, however: “What can a locavore eat in the winter?”
Well, quite a lot, really.
Sharon Astyk tells you how in “Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation.” A former academic turned writer, subsistence farmer, activist, and prolific blogger who farms in upstate New York with her husband and four children, raises livestock, and grows and preserves vegetables, Astyk previously wrote “Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front,” about peak oil, and “A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil.”
This, Astyk’s latest book, is her most practical in scope, but is still seasoned with considerable analysis of why locavoreanism matters. Those who pursue local foods end up following “a typical order of things,” she notes in “Independence Days,” starting with eating seasonally and gradually learning to make do with what is available, or to preserve seasonal foods for the off-season. “Food Preservation and Food Storage are logical steps in locavore life… to keep the links going all year around.”…
(18 Nov 2009)
Sharon blogs about some afterthoughts to her book. -KS
Oilrigs should be used for homes in areas at risk of flooding, report says
Ben Webster, The Times
Decommissioned North Sea oil platforms should be towed to the waterfronts of coastal cities at risk of flooding and converted into homes, shops and universities protected from rising sea levels, a study recommends.
Britain should not retreat from the waves but embrace them, adapting to climate change and consequent flooding by building new communities, either on stilts or floating platforms.
A team of senior architects, engineers and civil servants, appointed by the Royal Institute of British Architects and Institution of Civil Engineers, considered the options for responding to a 6ft 6in (2m) rise in sea levels by the end of the century.
UK Climate Projections, published last year by the Government, predicted that sea levels would rise by up to 76cm by 2095 but said that there was small risk of a more rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, resulting in a 1.9m rise by the end of the century. About ten million people already live in areas at risk of flooding in England and Wales and the Government spends £570 million a year on coastal defences.
The study, entitled Facing up to Rising Sea Levels, focused on two cities, Kingston-upon-Hull and Portsmouth, where much of the urban area is up to 3m above the high-tide mark. Hull is particularly vulnerable, with a flood in 2007 damaging 8,000 homes, 100 businesses and 91 of the city’s 99 schools…
(15 Jan 2010)
The report can be accessed here.
Growing Home—Urban Agriculture in Chicago (video)
Yes! Magazine
“Well over 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban communities,” says Orrin Williams, the employment training coordinator for Growing Home, as he explains the importance of urban agriculture.
“Urban agriculture is, in my mind, critical to the rebirth of cities and communities that have fallen on hard times,” Williams says.
In this video, staff and interns at Growing Home’s Wood St. Urban Farm explain their part in ensuring the farm produces high-quality produce, and what working on the farm has meant to them…
(29 Jan 2010)
Towns Rush to Make Low-Carbon Transition
Tara Lohan, Yes! Magazine
The coastal town of Lincoln City, Oregon, has a lot to lose if nothing is done about climate change. The town sits 11 feet above sea level, and unchecked climate change could erode its beaches or flood the town.
Residents are taking matters into their own hands. “We could ignore it, let the federal government deal with it,” Mayor Lori Hollingsworth says. “We’re not willing to do that.” Last year Lincoln City committed to becoming carbon neutral through renewable energy, energy efficiency, and offsets.
Communities like Lincoln City have long been ahead of Congress and the White House on climate commitments. Cities first began committing to Kyoto goals in 2005 through the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Now more than 1,000 cities have signed on. But the community climate movement goes beyond local government initiatives. It’s a cultural shift involving people at all levels of the community, from tiny rural towns in red states to major metropolitan areas.
From the Ground Up
The Transition Towns movement in the United States is less than two years old, but it came from the seeds of earlier relocalization efforts and other community climate groups and nonprofits. The Towns have become successful by sharing training resources and experiences with existing groups and other communities, and reaching out to local government.
The key is to raise public awareness. “What we try to focus on is developing a positive vision of our preferred future,” says Olson.
A lecture on climate change may not appeal to everyone, but you can interest people in things like gardening, Olson says. “We talk to them about heirloom seeds and what their grandparents grew and if they’d like to learn canning. We get them involved without even mentioning transition or sustainability.”…
(1 Dec 2010)
