Food

Review: Localisation and Resilience by Rob Hopkins

by

The dissertation is a case study of the first official Transition Town, the English market town of Totnes, long a popular tourist destination known for its alternative culture. Using interviews, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and other social science research methods, the study examines the degree to which the Transition ideals of localization and resilience have become a reality in Totnes. (Transitioners endorse a number of upbeat definitions of a resilient community, a popular one being “[a] culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its own limits, and able to thrive for having done so.”*)

A patch of somewhere else

by

When people list history’s most world-changing inventions, they usually include fire, or guns, or computers. Rarely do people mention something so ubiquitous to us that it has become, literally, invisible – glass and transparent plastic. In the Renaissance, though, when glass began to be sheeted and shaped in quantity and with skill, it created a boom in civilisation; microscopes and telescopes opened up the breadth of the world to science, spectacles doubled men’s intellectual lifetime, and windows allowed for the creation of the first greenhouses.

Bringing wilderness home

by

We are cultivating a hunter-gatherer garden, modifying but not eradicating the forest ecology. Not so different from what the Wampanoag and Narragansett did, but more suited to our greater numbers. We are growing wildlife and insects and biological diversity. We are bringing wilderness home. We buy less food. We need fewer fields. Who will say to us or our children or our grandchildren in 50 years that this place isn’t wilderness?

Food & agriculture – Feb 7

by

– Mark Bittman in NYT: A Food Manifesto for the Future
– ‘The Soil Solution’ Film Preview
– Global Food Prices Hit New Record High
– Obesity Has Nearly Doubled Worldwide Since 1980: Report
– Oysters disappearing worldwide: study
– Peak cocoa

Small is beautiful. Big is necessary.

by

To Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of BRAC—formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee—“Small is beautiful, but big is necessary.” It is a reference to the book Small is Beautiful by economist E.F. Schumacher, which criticizes western economics and hails small, local economies that empower people and their communities.

The fibershed project- Living one year in locally grown clothes

by

Rebecca Burgess is an ecological restoration educator, author, and textile artist.  Burgess is the founder of the Fibershed Project; a year-long challenge to live in clothes made from fibers sourced within 150 miles from her home.  In this interview, Burgess explains what a fibershed is, talks about the hidden environmental costs of the textile industry, and shares with listeners some of her favorite natural fabrics.

Peak Moment 188: Your personal baker — A bakery CSA

by

Watch baker Jen Ownbey whip up a batch of zucchini bread while she talks with Janaia about doing what she loves. Every week, members of her bakery CSA (community supported agriculture) get a handmade, local, mostly organic, and even personalized box of breads and bakery desserts. Jen talks about getting started, selling wholesale and at growers markets, plus the joys, lessons, and challenges of running a solo business.

Overcoming systems stupidity

by

A very large part of the reason why contemporary American society so often defeats itself by chasing after fantasies of limitless growth is a learned blindness to the behavior of whole systems. It’s hard to think of a challenge more necessary or less popular than learning to measure our expectations against the realities, and especially the limits, of natural systems; the Archdruid suggests some resources for the job.

Wood by the cord yields lots of discord

by

Sitting by the woodstove, I am warmed twice when I read that a cord of shagbark hickory equals 250 gallons of No. 2 oil in heat value. I don’t know what heating oil costs right now, or what that equals in gas heat or electric heat, but it sounds like my wood is worth real money today.