Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Arriving at Flying Mule Farm on the cusp of lambing season and on the heels of a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the fields are damp with recent rain. Ewes and lambs call to each other and in the morning light. It’s easy to get sentimental about spaces like this where the animals match the rhythms of the land.
Comparative advantage is still routinely invoked as a justification for free trade today, so it remains sadly necessary to explain why it’s a poor foundation for contemporary economies.
The clearest point which comes through Wuthnow’s thoughtful engagement with the dozens of farmers he and his assistants interviewed, and with the reams of data about rural populations, farm economics, and more that they assessed, is simply this: most American farmers, most of the time, are not agrarians.
The aim of the map is to catalyze these voluntary transfers to indigenous people and people of color who are eager to build a life in agriculture, but are stymied by systemic injustices.
This is a story about people who build their own machines. It’s a story about people who, due to necessity and/or conscious choice, do not buy commercial equipment to work their lands or animals, but who invent, create and adapt machines to their specific needs: for harvesting legumes, for hammering poles, for hitching tools onto tractors.
In 2018, we are excited to design, develop, and pilot the model for a seed-to-fabric supply chain for industrial hemp fiber to be shared with the larger industrial hemp and fiber movement.
I can see big advantages, both environmental and ethical in reducing the production and consumption of grain-fed meat, be it chicken, pork or beef. But there is an overwhelmingly important case why we should continue to produce and eat meat from animals predominantly reared on grass, especially when it is species-rich and not fertilised with nitrogen out of a bag.
Culture is what people do. It decays when people stop culturing. Changing a culture means changing what we do. Often, that will need a step by step transition as we negotiate obstacles.
To love the farming in a global economic context that writes its economic bottom line in diesel is not only a hard thing, but a conflicted thing. I can’t claim to have extracted myself from those dismal economics but my good fortune is that, on the ground and on the page, at least I’ve found some opportunities to try.
It had been 10 long years of fighting, but even a decade wouldn’t age or persuade the women to put down their stones, or to keep Amelia’s tongue in her mouth, to silence her words in a language that wasn’t her own.
This direct sales home delivery model has long been the domain of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. However, thanks mainly to online technology, this revolution is ratcheting up a notch with the arrival of a raft of new companies backed by city finance.
In focusing on soil, Camp Altiplano’s ultimate goal is to learn how to bring degraded land back to life. If current rates of global soil degradation continue, it’s estimated we may only have 60 years of farming left.
