Knock the Head off the pedestal and raise the Hand
I believe we need to resurrect the Hand and the Heart in our world views, and knock the Head off the pedestal.
Building resilient food and farming systems
Talking giblets: animal welfare and the Christmas turkey
Try and choose a bird that has lived the best possible life for the budget you have available, and indulge in your Christmas dinner without the nasty after-taste of animal suffering on your conscience.
Supply Chains No Longer Fit For Purpose
Farmers in England and Wales want to move away from centralised supply chains where they say they have little influence over prices, not enough connection to consumers, and are not rewarded for delivering positive climate and nature outcomes.
A small farm future – the case for common property
I believe the key aspect of commoning as doing good things together in the fact that both take their place within a larger collective politics of creating resilient and renewable local societies where people are autonomous and self-possessed actors within larger cooperative networks.
COP26 – Caught in a Net: Agriculture, Climate Change, and the Decarbonisation Agenda
As COP26 draws to a close, this blog offers some reflections on the fraught relationship between the mainstream process and the social movements, and what this means for the fight for a just and agroecological transition.
How to Grow Mushrooms on Woodchip
Growing mushrooms on woodchip can be done under trees in the field or garden, or you can put the chip into containers and grow either inside or outdoors. Scale of production, available facilities, and time at one’s disposal are things that might affect your choice of system.
Food Sovereignty, Climate Action and Local Resilience
Beyond our local context, the Food Sovereignty movement provides a global political framework for change based on social justice, solidarity, empowering women and re- organising international trade and economic relations.
Bet the Farm: Excerpt
How do we move away from a historically based, commodity-focused system that barely covers the cost of growing food to one that is more supportive of diverse small- and medium-scale farms? How do we ensure tasty and nourishing food, vibrant rural communities, and a range of farmer backgrounds?
Fighting for food justice in a Texas food desert
The Dallas Food Justice Coalition provides a simple but powerful model. By bringing together community advocates from different areas of food justice, they’ve begun cultivating a grassroots solution to our broken food system that focuses on empowering and educating the community rather than simply providing aid.
Farming Bounded By Our Biological Boundaries – Part Four
Feeding the soil and avoiding fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of sustainable farming. Techno-solutions aside, this will entail working with nature by mimicking nature – and harnessing the capabilities of ruminants.
Media briefing: Farming can be a climate change solution, so why is it missing in action at COP26?
Sustainable farming systems that work in harmony with nature have an essential role to play and farmers want to be part of the movement for change.
Fincastle: Sustainable hill farming is the future
Using Forest Research figures, we reckon that planting around 15% of our farm with wood pasture (around a third more than at present) could offset all of our emissions – something which we can definitely achieve without any real loss of agricultural production.
