Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
They are creating a relationship between farmer and customer. “It’s what a farm should be doing, feeding local people surrounding the farm,” says Gerald, “if every farmer did that, we wouldn’t need supermarkets. It’s therapy for the farmer and for the community.”
People around the world are hard at work creating diverse, living versions of the farms of the future. As a way of life, it would be nice to think that it could really catch on, and one day be accessible to most of us.
Europe’s precautionary principle is being challenged in the name of innovation. What might at first seem like a battle of words could, however, have profound impacts on the future of food and farming in the UK, across Europe and beyond.
We had no illusions about the futures imagined by status quo institutions and actors — but we also left grounded in the knowledge that our vision seeds are rooted 5,000 years deep in the soil already, and roots that deep might just be resilient and resistant enough to create a new abundance for all.
The eventual decline in fossil hydrocarbon flows, and the inability of renewables to fully substitute, will create a deficiency of energy to power bloated urban agglomerations and require a shift of human populations back to the countryside. In short, the future is rural.
The dictionary definition of ‘farmer’ is simply: “someone who owns or manages a farm”. A farm is: “an area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals”.
Tune in as Jill Buck of Go Green Radio talks with Dr. Bradford about his report and an upcoming event designed to identify and discuss key leverage points where individuals and communities can most effectively shift our food system towards long-term sustainability through greater energy efficiency and localization.
Hedgerows offer fields a needed balance, a wild river through human land that can soak up our excesses and give us a reservoir of food and fuel for lean times. They give your garden a third dimension, a vertical salad bar that middle-aged and elderly can reach with a minimum of back pain.
Soils are, after all, the structural foundation for any food production system. So when we first undertake an agroecological approach to farming, we are literally building a sustainable food system from the ground up.
Well, however one construes it, keeping in mind that rebuilding a sense of place will probably also mean rebuilding a sense of mutual obligation between different types of places is an important lesson, I think.
Inside our own closet is one place we may begin to make changes that will have lasting impacts on our biosphere, climate and personal health, and for this reason we created the Fibershed Clothing Guide to share a menu of actions and options.
Virtually all of these papers and the FAO’s figure of 14.5 percent are flawed because they employ a formula for equating the climate impact of methane emissions with that of carbon dioxide— through the unit known as “CO2 equivalent “— which is highly misleading.
