Food & agriculture – Sept 24
-Spinach power gets a big boost
-Will EU subsidies be enough to encourage greener farming?
-In San Francisco, a secret project bears fruit
Food
Using the old farm to sell the new
Historians like to say that we can’t “go back” to the past and that certainly is true in a general sort of way. But as a matter of fact, in farming circles, we are always “going back” one way or another. In every generation there are people who decide that “going back” is a way to escape what they dislike in the present and there are a whole lot of people, now and historically, who dislike what is going on in agriculture.
The no-waste food preservation plan
40% of all food produced worldwide, and nearly half of all food produced in the US goes to waste. When you break down the realities of food waste, you see that in the developing world, much of the waste is due to lack of ability to preserve food — no refrigeration means that sheep you slaughtered is waste if all of it isn’t eaten or dried or otherwise preserved immediately.
In the Global North, however, the vast majority of food is wasted not in the field, but in the process of getting to our homes.
Sail Transport Movement Enters U.S. Mainstream
The last month has seen exciting U.S. sail-transport developments. Three encouraging events indicate that the nation may no longer be falling behind Europe in nurturing a critical form of renewable energy. In northern Europe at least four well-established players are operating on a significant scale, and preparing to build more ships…Due in part to the constant promotion of sail power by the Sail Transport Network and participating sailors since 1999, the U.S. is finally rising to the occasion. The occasion is none other than the recent historic global peaking of easy-to-extract-and-refine conventional crude oil, and the accelerating destabilization of the Earth’s benign climate.
Hopeful Harvest: Food and agriculture as a foundation for peace in Northern Afghanistan
This apparent disconnect between the symptoms of a failed state and the remedies suggested by what is seen to constitute its healthy counterpart makes it difficult to imagine a way out of failed-statehood. We contend that it is necessary to rethink what a failed state is, to understand, at a rather more practical, grassroots level, the drivers of failed or successful societies.
But will she lay? Review of Keeping Chickens
For the past two years gardening has been my great obsession. I’ve planted fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers, with great hopes for how beautiful and nourishing they’ll be both now and in the years to come. I’ve even taken on beekeeping and have one beehive near my back porch. The only things missing are chickens.
Full planet, empty plates: The new geopolitics of food scarcity (new book chapter)
The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.
Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.
The most wonderful (gardening) time of the year
Growing a garden during the regular summer season here in Oklahoma can be a slog of uncomfortable heat and drought. 114+ temperatures, weeks without rain…painful. Without our reliable perennial fruit trees, some of us would grow little at all. Many Oklahoma farmers and gardeners have even begun muttering about giving up completely on the summer garden. But the fall season? Now, that’s a different story.
Canning Tomatoes 101
We do a lot of canning here, especially with tomatoes. We harvest several hundred pounds every year with most of it being preserved. This year I’ve been getting a lot of questions about canning and tomatoes seem to the most popular.
Beyond big dams: Turning to grass roots solutions on water
Mega-dams and massive government-run irrigation projects are not the key to meeting world’s water needs, a growing number of experts now say. For developing nations, the answer may lie in small-scale measures such as inexpensive water pumps and other readily available equipment.