Staring Out Across The Fields
The fact that there are no crops to watch now does not mean than there is not plenty for farmer eyes to see.
The fact that there are no crops to watch now does not mean than there is not plenty for farmer eyes to see.
With a long-time eye to declining energy resources, Bart Anderson envisions a very different society in five years. The former editor of Energy Bulletin.net offers advice for post-oil living: Understand the problem. Prepare psychologically for big shifts and the unexpected. Find your niche and get good at it. See what your great grandparents did as a model for living well within limits. “Live poor and learn to do it well” as Bart did as a graduate student. Things will be very different, he said, but we’ll make it through.
I’ve gottten literally dozens of emails begging me to weigh in on the East Anglia climate scandal, and for a while, I was reluctant to do so, because ultimately, paying attention to something so inane just gives it credibility. We’re back, again, to the old battles over climate change — attention to trivialities in the absence of the central issue.
New research from the Soil Association reveals that if all UK farmland was converted to organic farming, at least 3.2 million tonnes of carbon would be taken up by the soil each year – the equivalent of taking nearly 1 million cars off the road.
In October 2008, Deconstructing Dinner had the pleasure of spending time on Cortes Island, British Columbia with a group of young enthusiastic adults who had just spent 8 months learning the intricacies of growing food using organic and permaculture principles…On this episode we meet those students and instructors to learn more about this unique programme, its impacts on the students, and perhaps for us as listeners, can act as inspiration to develop similar programmes in our own communities.
A little office work can boost farmers’ profits, says Vermont organic farmer Richard Wiswall…Wiswall has collected 27 years of farming business wisdom in the newly published The Organic Farmers’ Business Handbook. Also, wastewater expert Buzz Ferver talks about how to capture the nutrients in wastewater and use them in food production.
Returning home from a new farmers’ market in Wooster, Ohio last Saturday (Nov. 21), I passed a scene in a farm field that might have said more about where farming is headed than any economist’s prediction I have seen lately. Out in a clover field stood a big yellow school bus full of chickens.
Unless and until we mobilize a mass movement to take down and transform the U.S. legal, political and economic systems upholding the fiction that corporations possess the same constitutional rights as individuals, along with other hallmarks of corporate power, it is fruitless to blame green consumers for the failure to spur large-scale meaningful change.
It’s all about community. The age of cheap fossil fuels allowed us to forget that. But communities are making a comeback, and we’ll need strong ones if we’re to get through the years ahead with minimal human suffering. We’ll also need tremendous doses of compassion, creativity, and courage.
During the month of October, CBC Radio’s political affairs show, The House, ran a four-part mini-series on peak oil, called “Going Local.” The third episode examined the implications of peak oil for the Canadian agri-food sector and was chosen as a CBC “Editor’s Choice” item. The episode includes interviews with two farmers near Ottawa, Ontario and a discussion with Rick Munroe, the energy security analyst for Canada’s National Farmers Union.
Today’s episode features segments from Agroinnovations featuring well-known figures like Paul Stamets – a mycologist (aka mushroom specialist) from Olympia, Washington, the U.K’s Rob Hopkins who has popularized the Transition Town Movement and Montana journalist and author Richard Manning, who possesses a keen interest in the history and future of the American prairie and agriculture.
-Swiftboating the Climate Scientists
-Countdown to Copenhagen: A change in the political climate on emissions
-Deforestation emissions should be shared between producer and consumer, argues study