Helping Refugees Become Sustainable Farmers

On a recent Saturday, the Overland Park, Kansas, Farmers’ Market bustled with customers by 7:30 a.m. Amid dozens of vendors, four graduates from the New Roots for Refugees program sold sustainably grown kale, plump cucumbers, enormous scallions, bright red cherry tomatoes, and more.

The Supply Chain of Fats: Olive Oil

Olive oil may well have been recommended for health reasons – it is a monosaturated fat and, in its cold-pressed extra virgin form, can help lower risk of a heart attack, stroke and heart disease – but what about the supply chain and the economies in the countries it is affecting? A critical look at the supply chain will help to answer these important questions.

10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Milwaukee and the Victory Garden Initiative

To return this sense of empowerment, food sovereignty, and resilience to the people, Transition Milwaukee helped to launch and incubate the Victory Garden Initiative, which recently celebrated installing its 4,000th garden.

The Transition from Capitalism to Feudalism

Historians have spilled a lot of ink on the question of how capitalism supplanted feudalism, but what will happen in the future if by design, default or disaster our present capitalist society is supplanted by a lower energy alternative with more people devoting themselves to the agrarian arts?

Rooted in Community: The Chico Flax Project

In choosing the name of a place, The Chico Flax Project is pointing to more than the location of their farm — they’re highlighting the numerous community members interwoven with the vision to make a Chico-based cloth.

Big Meat and Dairy are Heating up our Planet

Today, IATP and GRAIN jointly published a first of its kind study that quantifies emissions from 35 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies and scrutinizes their climate plans. What do these companies intend to do to reduce their share of emissions for the world to avoid climate catastrophe?

How Farms can Help Improve the Lives of Disadvantaged Young People

On social farms, health, social or specialist educational care services for vulnerable people are delivered through structured programmes of farming-related activities. Social farming is established in numerous European countries. Norway currently operates 1,100 social farms, compared to 240 in the UK.

Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism

Charles C. Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to bulk up this two-pronged thesis, he will throw in supplementary material that threatens to bog down his central investigation. But that investigation comes through loud and clear all the same, and it is one worth looking at closely.