Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In an ongoing series called “Monday Mayhem,” radio host with a pragmatic view of tackling the challenges of energy, food, and the local economy at the end of the age of oil goes head-to-head with a radio host who promotes free-market solutions. In this edition, Carl Etnier and Rob Roper discuss what it looks like to apply the principles of local, organic food to the functions of government.
How do we plan for this new situation, in which food and energy seem likely to again be rising in relationship to incomes, and as a result, living standards quite likely declining? The following are a few of my thoughts.
The toys most of us really remember playing with as children weren’t really toys but things we turned into toys. My earliest recollection is a matchbox of multicolored and multisize rubberbands I played with by the hour when I was about two. I don’t know why they fascinated me only that they did. Even the matchbox was a wonder — the way it slid so neatly open and closed.
When contemplating whether humans can successfully adapt to climate change, it is worth noting that at least twice in the last 1.2 million years our species was almost wiped out. Genetic research confirms that 1.2 million years ago the human population on Earth was around 18,500, perilously close to extinction. The reason for this low number is not directly known. Then about 150,000 years ago, it plummeted again down to just 2,000, probably due to climate change.
Much has been made of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s FAO) 2009 recommendation that the world will need to produce 70 percent more food to feed the projected global population of 9.1 billion people in 2050. Policymakers and agricultural investors have focused on increasing supply for the global food market. And while 925 million people worldwide today remain chronically hungry—amidst unprecedented population growth, resource depletion, and climate change—meeting the needs of the future is an enormous challenge for the world food system.
In Resilience Circles, we say three things need to happen to make a transition to a new economy: we need a new story about the economy that dismantles the myth of “recovery;” we need stronger communities; and we need new “rules” – i.e. new policies befitting a democracy instead of rule by a corporate elite. To make this happen, Resilience Circles learn together, engage in mutual aid, and take social action.
I can lose anything, even cows and sheep. Once we lost a whole herd of Holsteins. They disappeared into a corn field and I did not find them until they were cruising at top speed through Aunt Stella’s garden on the next farm. When my father and I were farming acreages several miles apart, I even lost a tractor once.
Despite the fact that you have a life, a job, a family, volunteer responsibilities and enough backlog in your life to keep you busy until 2182, you’ve decided that you are going to do food preservation too. This means finding time to do so, and that isn’t easy. It helps to plan for the realities of the harvest – and this is planning that applies both to people with gardens who may now be planting, and people who plan to put up food from local farmers.
Hundreds of gate designs have been devised to ease the passage in and out of fields and barnyards. Almost all of them depend on hinges to carry the weight of the gate swinging open or closed…these gates eventually sag and drag on the ground… The simple board gate shown here avoids the problem and expense…
-Analysis: E.coli outbreak poses questions for organic farming
-Are Bean Sprouts the End of Organic Farming? Nah.
-Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists
-Mom-and-pop vs. big-box stores in the food desert
-Organic farming – India’s future perfect?
-Challenges of a Colorado Local Food Initiative
In 2006 I began a book that traced the relationship between flowers and the human imagination, those circular and winding tracks that are buried deep inside. It’s a record of a 10 year exploration into the linguistics of wild medicinal plants and a description of a practice I developed with Mark that began with some questions: Can we enter the flower’s territory on its own terms, beyond our monocultural control of the “environment”? What effects do their fragrance, their medicine, their shapes have on our imaginations, on our memories? How do they enter our dreams?
But Fair Food… is not a book primarily about the problems of our broken food system,” says Hesterman. “It is a book primarily about the solutions.” It serves as a guide to changing not only what we eat, but also how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed, and sold. The book starts by outlining the nuances of our food system, how it evolved the way it did, and why it is failing us.
