What does the Word “Farmer” Mean?
The definition of farmer is: “a person who cultivates land or crops or raises animals (such as livestock or fish).”[1] In use, however, the term isn’t that clear.
Building resilient food and farming systems
You Belong to the Land: A Conversation with Karen Washington and Leah Penniman
When the Center for Humans and Nature set out to shape a question on farming, we asked Karen Washington and Leah Penniman if they would be willing to have a conversation about their work.
Changing the World one Meal at a Time: How Chefs can Make Eating out more Sustainable
Imagine a canteen where chefs cook up diverse dishes from food produced with care for the planet, prepared in a low-energy kitchen that wastes nothing. Now chefs all over the world can get the support and the impetus they need to realise this sustainable food vision with help from a chef-driven resource that aims to make the world a better place.
The Agrarian Alternative
Such an agrarian civilization will see no impending ecological doom but instead a future of steady processes and patterns with no need for faith in great technological inventions of salvation. Not a utopian world – surely grappling with problems of their own – but a wise culture; taking the lessons of a past society bent on ever-more for ever-more’s sake to heart and respecting limits.
Landscape as a Whole at the Hulsman Ranch
The daily tasks may seem menial, but as Hannah puts it, “Being out there reinforces everything in life —having a hand in maintaining how things are.” The large plans and the small tasks are both a part of continuing the ranch’s legacy to see and treat the land as a whole.
Eating Tomorrow: Excerpt
That is why I decided to write this book. I needed to understand why our leaders, after the wake-up call of a global food crisis, remained so blindly committed to business-as-usual policies that ignored the affordable solutions all around them. These solutions could help hungry farmers eat today while giving them the natural and financial resources that could allow them—and all of us—to eat tomorrow.
With New Perennial Grain, a Step Forward for Eco-Friendly Agriculture
A cereal and beers are now being made with a new variety of perennial grain known as Kernza. Proponents say this marks a significant advance for a new agriculture that borrows from the wild prairie and could help ensure sustainable food production in a warming world.
Selection by Stone
With one stone, Abdellah Bounagua ensured his voice was heard. He was able to guide breeders like Filippo in their development of the varieties that will allow him, and other farmers like him, to prosper while the climate changes. That’s a big splash for such a small stone.
What County Farms Can Do For Us
“If people are serious about producing good, sustainable and healthy food with high animal welfare and environmental standards, whilst looking after rural communities, county farms have an important role to play.”
TyT Field Dispatches: ‘I Remember When All This was Bare Earth’
One standout issue this time was how much joy I felt (and others appeared to feel) on being in the field, gathering on the farm, and (especially) being in the field that had greater diversity. All this is missing from our results. The conventional measures we use aren’t particularly good at reflecting the process of research, which – in citizen science at least – is arguably so much more important than ‘results’.
Small Farms don’t Produce Most the of the Worlds’ Food – But they Could Produce All
The key message is that the potential of small farms for global food production is determined by economic conditions rather than biological, ecological or agronomic limitations.
California Cotton Fields: a Renewed Opportunity for Rebuilding Soil
There is ample evidence that some level of cotton production could fit into an ecologically sensitive farming system, yet the future of this crop in our climate relies on re-building organic matter, carbon levels, and dynamic microbial communities in the soil where the cotton is grown.
