Food

Attributing the food price spike

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All caveats aside, you can see the main point here: biofuels are much much larger than Russian weather fluctuations as a total factor affecting cereal supply for food. This is not to deny any role for the Russian harvest change in the current food price spike.  It was an unexpected negative shock, and I’m sure it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  But should we blame the straw, or instead focus on the fact that the camel was already loaded to the breaking point?

A story of choosing to live simply and grow one’s own food in rural Japan

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Koichi Yamashita’s four objectives for farming: (1) Be lazy. Save labor by cutting corners and not doing unnecessary work. (2) Be stingy. Don’t spend any money. Forget about the economic system. (3) Be safe. Don’t use poisons on your food. (4) Don’t be greedy with the soil. Determine its actual fertility and don’t try to get a bigger harvest than you ought to by using too much fertilizer. If you understand what your soil can really produce, you will have a stable harvest from year to year.

Hoarding vs. storing: Examples from Fukushima

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What is not hoarding? It isn’t building up a reasonable supply of goods before a crisis point (this is only prudent), nor is it attempting to survive and protect the basic health of your family when there is no system of fair distribution. This last is a very important point.

Oaken resilience

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The one thing that I’ve learned living in the woods is that trees can take care of themselves. All we puny humans need to do to help them is to stop the bulldozers from removing them in favor of more asphalt and corn. But since my inclination is to worry too much about almost everything, learning that trees know what they are doing has not been easy.

The planet’s scarcest resource is time

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Analyst, author and founder of the Earth Policy Institute Lester Brown discusses how unprepared the world really is for the growing effects of climate change. “Economists doing supply and demand projections are largely unaware” of the scale of the resource crises facing the world, Brown says, and “food is going to be the weak link for our civilization as it was for so many earlier civilizations.”

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City – ebook preview

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The Urban Homestead is the essential handbook for a fast-growing new movement: urbanites are becoming gardeners and farmers. Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.

Food & agriculture – March 21

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– Quinoa’s Global Success Creates Quandary at Home (Bolivia)
– Ethiopia at centre of global farmland rush
– Perennial Crops, Sustainable Agriculture: A 21st Century Green Revolution (Wes Jackson)
– Can poor Kenyan fishermen can improve themselves without destroying local coral reefs? (audio)
– Nunavut plans to promote local foods

Preserving biodiversity, promoting local foods: An interview with Slow Food-USA’s Gordon Jenkins

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Food is at the core of so many of our global problems, including hunger, obesity, energy, climate change, economic disparity, and on and on. But it’s also something that unites us— everyone eats.

Transition in action: ‘From the ground up’

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FGU follows a cooperative working model, although it is not formally registered as one. FGU has an ‘each voice counts’ membership, inviting all members to participate in decisions. We operate within the Transition Town umbrella but are autonomous in the pursuit of our objectives. We aim to become a source of information on the benefits of healthy eating and responsible farming and are sharing ideas and best practices with other like-minded initiatives, starting with participating in a mentoring scheme with Stroudco. And, most importantly we aim to engender a spirit of community with designated meeting and working locations.

Peak Moment 191: The vegetarian myth

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What we eat is destroying both our bodies and the planet, according to author Lierre Keith, a recovering twenty-year vegan. While she passionately opposes factory farming of animals, she maintains that humans require nutrient-dense animal foods for good health. A grain-based diet is the basis for degenerative diseases we take for granted (diabetes, cancer, heart disease) – diseases of civilization. Annual grain production is destroying topsoil and creating deserts on a planetary scale. Lierre urges the restoration of perennial polycultures for longterm sustainability.

More fish in the sea

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Still in their infancy, sustainable fisheries trusts were born of the mounting need for new ways to aid community-based fishermen who stand as frontline stewards of the fisheries they have depended on for generations. Trusts now emerging in selected U.S. ports provide footholds for transforming the act of buying fish into a direct investment in the health of the fisheries where they are caught and the livelihoods of the fishermen who catch them.

Trying to make sense out of the last supper

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First of all, I care because I think many small churches are closing for the same reason small farms are closing, that is, false notions about economics. The general thinking is that it is more profitable to cram more people into fewer, bigger churches just like it is more profitable to cram more hogs into fewer, bigger barns.