By Esha Chhabra, Fibershed
In 1989, she brought naturally colored cotton back to the market. The iconic image of a white cotton ball had become pervasive. Yet Sally Fox had been looking at ancient, pest-resistant (by nature) varieties that came in shades of the Earth like greens and browns.
By Wayne Roberts, Resilience.org
Neighborhood groups, business improvement associations, and unions can adopt policy. Universities can adopt policies to buy local and sustainable food. The power of public and para-public purses is more widely available than ever before. As well, the talents of citizens for self government and leadership are higher than ever before. We need to look ahead to a world of policy partnerships.
By Sue Pritchard, Sustainable Food Trust
We often talk about how important it is to see the ‘whole system’ – to understand more fully the relationships and interdependencies in the world. Our own work – across food, farming and countryside, public health and wellbeing, economics and rural development – seeks to illuminate the links.
By Catherine Broomfield, Sustainable Food Trust
What we must not forget amid the reams of policy briefings and papers, is that rural economies are not an abstract concept, but a mosaic of real people, places and passions that drive creativity and entrepreneurship. Here are two such stories of the many remarkable everyday tales of rural economy folk.
By Susan R. Holmberg, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The Democratic primary debate on 27th June was probably the first time that soil management — as climate policy — was ever mentioned at a primetime Presidential campaign event. It was also one of the first tangible mentions of farm policy in two nights of debates.
By Eduardo Sasso, Resilience.org
As farmer and Christian writer Wendell Berry made it clear in ‘The Pleasures of Eating’, most of us eat in great ignorance today. Faith and food have become, literally, like water and oil.
By Colin Anderson, Iain MacKinnon, Agroecology Now!
Agroecological approaches to agriculture improve rural livelihoods, regenerate ecologies and increase the resiliency of communities, while providing healthy and sustainable food.
By Planet Pod, Staff, Planet Pod
What can you do with 9 tonnes of Pumpkins? Make curry, of course! This and other questions were on the menu when we sat around the table to chat about sustainable food and how Bristol is going for Gold as a Sustainable Food City with our guests...
By Adrian Ayres Fisher, Ecological Gardening
The central, overarching question on which all sides apparently agree is this: To avoid disastrous climate change and environmental destruction, how are we humans to manage our land such that the land regenerates, biodiversity increases, and carbon is sequestered?
By Walter Lewis, Feeding Body and Soul
Tucked away along a country lane just outside Coventry is Ryton Organic Gardens and home of a charity, Garden Organic, which brings together thousands of people who share a common belief that organic growing is essential for a healthy and sustainable world. Open to the public, it’s a place more than worth a visit.
By Helene Schulze, Sustainable Food Trust
A Europe-wide movement is an opportunity to pool resources and learn from each other. Reaching across national and disciplinary borders is a way to reach a critical mass in terms of size, attracting the attention of regional, national and international policymakers to ensure socially and environmentally ambitious reform.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Perhaps I should essay a brief report here on things I heard and learned at the 2018 Oxford Real Farming Conference that I attended a couple of weeks back. If I try to lay it all out in connected prose I’ll probably come grinding to a halt after about 5,000 words, so I thought I’d present it mostly in the form either of little news snippets or of one-sentence assertions…the latter being things I heard people say, or thoughts I had while listening at the conference.