Food

Peak Moment 198: How many community gardens?

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Having learned “How Much Food Can I Grow Around My House?” (Peak Moment 87), Judy Alexander kept right on going. As chair of the Local 2020 Food Resiliency Action Group in Port Townsend, WA, she helped initiate 25 community gardens in her county within four years. Sitting in her own neighborhood’s garden, she talks about the power of cooperative gardens compared with individual plots. There’s something for people of all ages and skills to do (even non-gardeners), while enjoying learning from one another, and building closer neighbors and a more secure community.

Corn Pros and Cons

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The ear of corn is one awesome seedhead and growing the stuff is fairly easy, all things considered. That’s the whole problem. Corn is sort of like sex. It is such a wonderful thing that it is easy to carry to excess.

To profit or not to profit on the food movement?

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When one considers one’s actions as activism, done for the purpose of creating social, political, or economic change, and not just personal fulfillment, it behooves one to have a “theory of change.” The “anti-capitalist” theory of change holds that solutions to market failures can’tt come from the market (recalling Einstein, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”), and this is hard to square with a “green economy” theory of change, which believes that a capitalist economy can be reformed, through business, into one that is less destructive to people and the environment.

Stopping poverty through sustainability in the South Bronx: An interview with Majora Carter

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“…I am putting all of the pieces together in order to launch a national brand of locally grown produce—everything from the most efficient hydroponic growing systems, brand identity, USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] support, political allies, relationships with institutional buyers, and investors. I want to redirect some of the capital flows in the food business to revitalize underutilized industrial space and people.”

Growing water deficit threatening grain harvests

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Many countries are facing dangerous water shortages. As world demand for food has soared, millions of farmers have drilled too many irrigation wells in efforts to expand their harvests. As a result, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in some 20 countries containing half the world’s people. The overpumping of aquifers for irrigation temporarily inflates food production, creating a food production bubble that bursts when the aquifer is depleted.

“Land Grabs” in agriculture: Fairer deals needed to ensure opportunity for locals

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The trend of international land grabbing—when governments and private firms invest in or purchase large tracts of land in other countries for the purpose of agricultural production and export—can have serious environmental and social consequences, according to researchers at the Worldwatch Institute.

Barnyard Irony

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All those poets who like to sing about the joyous wonders of birthing ought to try barnyard midwifery awhile. How many times I have looked up in the dark and wondered why there couldn’t be a better way. If nature or science or intelligent design is so smart, why can’t we just order calves and lambs from Sears?

Fish fresh off the hook from community-supported fishers

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In many parts of the world, it is hard to find fresh fish to buy, even if you live next to the ocean. In Halifax, the largest city in Nova Scotia, a Canadian province known for its fishery, it takes at least six days for local fillets to make it from the fishing boats to the supermarket. With almost a week from sea to fork, the fish can hardly be called fresh. Now that’s changing. A group of five fishers have founded Off The Hook in a rebuke to the way fish have been bought and sold in Atlantic Canada. They call it a community supported fishery — a nod to the local food movement’s community-supported agriculture (CSA) direct marketing programs whereby farmers sell directly to customers.

Timing fall crops

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It is hard as heck to imagine that one of these days, I’ll be longing for a hot day again, and for the fresh food that accompanies it, but it always happens. It is also hard, deep in the dog days, to realize that right now is when you have to start thinking about your fall garden. That’s probably why so many of us start out beautifully, but peter out when the cold comes, running out of fresh things months before we have to.

Our salad days

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Here in Ireland, for example, March brought the first hawthorn shoots, along with the first dandelions, cowslips and primroses. A month later linden leaves could be taken right off the tree and chopped for salad, along with daisies, sorrel, parsley, bernard and clover. Then the red lettuces, green lettuces, mizuna and rocket came up, along with herbs like chives, borrage and coriander, and weeds like fat hen and Good King Henry. By June the kohlrabi, carrots and fennel could be uprooted, cleaned and grated. Right now the nasturtium, spinach and cabbages are ready and the dandelions and clover are still coming, and in winter we will turn to chicory and roots, while still growing other vegetables in the greenhouse.