Surveying Archaeologists Across the Globe Reveals Deeper and More Widespread Roots of the Human Age, the Anthropocene

By Ben Marwick, Erle C. Ellis, Lucas Stephens, Nicole Boivin, The Conversation

Not everyone is sure that today’s industrialized, globalized societies will be around long enough to define a new geological epoch. Perhaps we are just a flash in the pan – an event – rather than a long, enduring epoch. Others debate the utility of picking a single thin line in Earth’s geological record to mark the start of human impacts in the geological record. Maybe the Anthropocene began at different times in different parts of the world.

Mosquito-Flavored Popcorn, or What Climate Scientists Are Getting Wrong (Episode 8 of Crazy Town)

By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org

Did you know that we can lose half our food supply and it won’t matter? That’s because agriculture is only 3% of GDP, so there’s no need to worry about the effects of climate change on farming. Or so says the latest genius to win the Nobel Prize in economics.

“Which species are we sure we can survive without?” Revisited

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

We have eliminated the species around us with reckless abandon and without concern for whether we can survive without them. An alarming new study suggests a rapidly accelerating decline in worldwide insect populations. Can we survive without the insects of the world?

Is a key ingredient humans need to live about to run short?

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

Phosphorus is a key ingredient in modern fertilizers and essential for all living organisms. Will we have enough to feed the world in the decades to come?

Is Climate Change Taking the Food from Our Mouths?

By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion

Tis the seaso‘n when food is on most of our minds. What if next year or the year after some of that food was no longer available or even edible?

Agriculture and climate change: Is farming really a moveable feast?

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

There is a notion afoot that our agricultural production can simply migrate toward the poles in the face of climate change as areas in lower latitudes overheat and dry up. Few people contemplate what such a move would entail and whether it would actually be feasible.

The Return of the Peasant: or the History of the World in 10½ Blog Posts. 2.

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

But how did we get from the Palaeolithic foraging of my last post to the very apogee of mixed agrarianism shown in the picture? I’m glad you asked. To answer it, I need to go to way back when and return to my main historical thread by looking at some of the tensions within…

The Return of the Peasant: Or the History of the World in 10½ Blog Posts. 1. Origins

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

In the beginning, there was a Miocene ape – the common ancestor of our genus Homo and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas. It bequeathed to us its descendants, so the primatologists suggest, a tendency towards (particularly male, but also female) status ranking. Do we need to go that far back into our evolutionary past in order to understand the nature of status competition in contemporary societies? Perhaps it’s a sociological heresy to say so, but I think the answer is quite possibly yes.

Along a Desert River, A New Breed of Rancher

By Sandra Postel, National Geographic Newswatch

Schwennesen is among a new cadre of farmers and ranchers that brings a more holistic, ecological way of thinking to land management.

Farming controversies are so complicated

By Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer

I read an article on the DTN/Progressive Farming website that once again shows how difficult it is to resolve differences of opinion in farming disagreements. The article was an even-sided discussion of possible overproduction of organic crops, (which I plan to write about soon) but a respondent took the occasion to launch into a rather vitriolic attack on organic farming. He was irritated about the organic stand against herbicides.

The Miracle of Mals

By Ute Scheub, Future Perfect

By banning pesticides in a referendum, the community of Mals in Southern Tyrol is set to garner worldwide attention. That does not mean that the conflict is settled.

Connecting over Soil

By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Local Futures

Most people know that there's a huge wealth gap between the industrialized and so-called 'developing' worlds. But there's another gap, one that's rarely discussed in the media, or even by NGOs. It involves changing attitudes to farming, to the land and the soil.