Food

Garden as if your life depended on it, because it will

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Tremors in food supply chains and pricing will make gardening look like a lot more than a hobby, a seasonal workout, a practical way to fill your pantry with your summer favorites, or a physically, spiritually and mentally healing activity, or all four. Gardening and small-scale and collective farming, especially of staple crops and the ones that could stave off malnutrition, could become as important as bringing home the bacon, both the piggy and the dollar kind.

The future of food (2 of 2)

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But the combination of high food prices, open markets and young populations is explosive, and has certainly been a large factor in the uprisings in both Tunisia and Egypt. The Arab countries import more than half their food. And it may be that this urban effect may be one of the reasons why food price volatility is no greater than in the ’70s and ’80s, but the impact seems much larger.

“Attracting Native Pollinators” – the Xerces Society’s must-have handbook

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If you are responsible for and care for a backyard, school garden, park, farm, or reserve, this book is for you. If you are a fan of Douglas Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home, or garden according to the permaculture principles espoused in Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden or H.C. Flores’ Food Not Lawns, this book is for you. If you garden for birds or wildlife, or are a landscape designer, this book is for you. And if you are interested in reconciliation ecology or are planning a perennial border, raingarden or bioswale this book is for you, as well.

Radiation in Japanese Food: Interview with David Waltner-Toews

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There are so many things to consider here—the actual safety, the consumer acceptance, and what other food is available. In some countries after Chernobyl, health and environment officials simply increased the threshold for safety. The rationale was that it was better to eat some fresh foods that had a bit of radioactivity than to eat only processed, imported foods. It will take a lot of monitoring to sort through this over time.

Apocalypse chow pantry

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The authors of Apocalypse Chow have combined skills and with their experience weathering Florida hurricanes, put together a book on emergency prep that is a real find. Since most people have not acquired the long haul skills of canning their own home-grown produce or cooking dried beans in a solar oven, this book most replicates the resources of your average urban household.

Getting the President to laugh

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To be able to get the president of the United States to laugh like that in front of the whole world in these awful times… well, that’s a real accomplishment. I am not surprised, however. If you know Wendell [Berry], he can make very funny remarks at the most unexpected times. I asked him what he whispered to the president but he’s not talking. Says he can’t remember.

His message, now and always, is that society is ignoring and abandoning ecological and economic common sense and we will pay for it. Is he right? Look around you.

The local food revolution

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Anyone living in the Boulder area could scarcely have escaped noticing some of the obvious first signs of this revolution: Farmers’ markets are popping up around the county, along with roadside farmstands. More restaurants are sourcing their ingredients from local farmers and ranchers. Municipalities have been compelled to change laws to accommodate the rapidly rising citizen demand to raise chickens, goats and bees in residential backyards.

Breaking free from factory farms

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American farmer, lecturer and author Joel Salatin outlines the key issues America faces as its citizens increasingly rely on factory farms, concentrated animal feeding operations that require cheap energy in order to operate profitably. He condemns regulations that appear to be on the books to benefit animal factories and prevent individuals from farming sustainably.

Latest ‘Zeitgeist’ film mixes sound critique and goofy futurism

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‘Zeitgeist: Moving Forward,’ makes a strong critique of party politics, market economics and overshoot. The film even explores peak oil. But its solution is an unconvincing techno-utopian fantasy straight out of science fiction complete with pod-cities of the future. Why would such a schizophrenic film boast so many rabid fans?

 

Gardening on forest time

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Gardening in the forest requires a much different approach than vegetable or landscape gardening…Unlike a vegetable garden or a flower garden or a field of wheat or corn, a forest garden can provide all the necessities of a human economy, especially at the small scale of a homestead or village. History confirms this. But to reap these harvests requires an economy that is in most of its features the opposite of the economy that we have now and that organizes our world.

The coming global food fight

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The local organic farmers with whom we have been spending time in the Philippines and elsewhere are less affected by these price swings precisely because they consume much of what they harvest, and they sell the rest to local markets.  These farmers have achieved at the household level what Frances Moore Lappé terms “food democracy,” and what the small farmer coalition, Via Campesina, calls “food sovereignty” at a national level.