Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rainstorms finally arrived in California…but the big reservoirs are still pitifully low, and snow pack is less than a quarter of normal. Hundreds of thousands of acres will not be planted, and food bills will likely go up in North America, and possibly around the world.
The more I learn about it, the more Nature looks like a Rube Goldberg machine: energy and materials flow through convoluted paths to accomplish something seemingly simple.
"Agriculture is the oldest environmental problem," the Land Institute’s Wes Jackson tells us early in this 27-minute video.
This essay uses over a dozen working farms across the country (& a few other countries) to illustrate some of the key principles of the ecologically-based agriculture that will be required in the transition ahead. …The next steps are up to you, kid.
What services do wild and domesticated ruminants give to the land? How can we improve the quality of the land while also returning our relationship with cows from an industrial model to an agroecological one?
If you see the rise, if you smell that sweet pungency and know the journey from soil to palate, if you follow the weather patterns and the turning of the seasons, the journey of a seed into a staple, you know that the journey is coming to an end.
For the world as a whole, the era of rapidly growing fertilizer use is now history.
My wife and I went semi-nomadic in 2010, traveling the mountain West for almost two years. Not having a settled home was eye-opening, and taught me a lot about one of my perennial themes: how much humans lost when we became domesticated by agriculture.
The Southern Williamette Bean and Grain Project is exploring bean, grain, and edible seed varieties which can be added to those already grown in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
The discovery of new lands to exploit, and new energy sources, helped reinforce the notion that human societies can always find a way around limitations upon its growth.
You know that when energy in agriculture is discussed, the paradigm is energy production in the form of biofuels. But the idea of biofuels manufactured from agricultural products is monumentally wrong.
For over forty years, Nash Huber has grown healthy plants, soil, seeds — and now future farmers.
