Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Willamette Valley is famous for its grass seed production, and can even boast supplying the World Cup soccer fields in South Africa. The dominance of grass seed began to wane with the collapse of the housing bubble a few years ago. And while the major shift has been towards wheat, much more is going on.
Today’s farmland grabs are moving fast. Contracts are getting signed, bulldozers are hitting the ground, land is being aggressively fenced off and local people are getting kicked off their territories with devastating consequences. While precise details are hard to come by, it is clear that at least 50 million hectares of good agricultural land – enough to feed 50 million families in India – have been transferred from farmers to corporations in the last few years alone, and each day more investors join the rush.
Soil is the basis not only for all gardening, but for all terrestrial life. No aspect of agriculture is more fundamental and important, yet we have been losing vast quantities of our finite soil resources to erosion, pollution, and development. Now back in print, this eminently sensible and wonderfully well-focused book provides essential information about one of the most significant challenges for those attempting to grow delicious organic vegetables: the creation and maintenance of healthy soil.
…on my little one horse farm, there are 40 tires in use, not counting the ones on the car. And ten percent of them are flat at any given time. This is partly because most of my tires were vulcanized in the late Middle Ages or thereabouts. But it is also because there is something unsustainable and unnatural about riding around on air wrapped in a substance that comes from trees that grow half a million miles away.
-Why Food Is Still Cheap In America
-Vision — Urban Roots: Detroit’s Industrial Collapse Gives Birth to Flourishing City Gardening Movement (video)
-Nourish: Teaching About the Food System
-Food Now on Plate for All Federal Parties
– Canada military report: Oil shortages and environmental decline could create ‘global quagmire’
– ETH Zurich: Unsung bedrock of prosperity (phosphorus)
– Era of ‘tough oil’ won’t deter drillers
– What happens when we run out of water?
Whatever carbon-management system the world adopts, farming methods will need to change, and the efforts of hundreds of millions of people will be necessary to get the carbon out of the air. We, the residents of the world’s industrialized countries, should not expect our lives to continue in much the same way.
Modern agriculture would be inconceivable without phosphate fertilisers – and it needs more and more of them. Experts warn of an imminent phosphorus shortage. But not Roland Scholz from the Institute of Environmental Decisions. For him, the main problems are the open phosphorus cycle and non-sustainable resource management. Scholz considers the ecological and social costs of the unsustainable use of the resource to be more problematic than the peak: ‘The environmental damage caused by the extraction and use of phosphorus is still greatly underestimated.’
Once the property of nobility, then a consecrated sanctuary with questionable links to a common dice game, then a cloister for nuns and a family base for a member of the judiciary, my home of fifteen years now owns me.
Knowledge stands at the beginning of everything purposefully created. It takes knowledge to build farms and machines, to build firearms, or to steward the land. Having knowledge often means having power. Inequalities in access to knowledge often lead to power-inequalities.
-DIY Urban Design, from Guerrilla Gardening to Yarn Bombing (slide show)
-The antidote to apathy (video)
-“Sustainable Development vs Historic Preservation” Is A False Dichotomy
-Projects: Small is Successful (report)
Birds and their eggs have been part of our food chain for tens of thousands of years. In hard times, birds and their eggs were survival foods. In the not too distant future, chickens will be a pillar of survival and resiliency as we proceed into what we believe to be a looming energy descent.
