Food

Bee keeping for the energy descent future

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The co-originator of permaculture is upbeat on the prospects for apiculture as a sustainable and resilient livelihood in the future. Bees are livestock that free range up to 2km from home across all boundaries and barriers, harvesting nectar and pollen sources using their own amazing intelligence and communication. Honey is a compact, self preserving store of wealth that makes an excellent tradeable surplus in any economy that might survive or emerge in an energy descent future.

Strictly Roots – Low Carbon Cookbook

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When you have plants in common something happens. When you cook together something happens. It’s hard to say what really except that invisible connections are made that make sense of things in a time when absolute madness seems to rule. When fish are thrown back into the sea and everything once owned by the people is up for sale.

Film review: The farmer and the horse

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Jared Flesher’s film The Farmer and the Horse is a joy, an absolutely fascinating immersion into the world of three people who have fallen in love with working with horses. In a world where the production of food is hugely dependent on the availability of cheap liquid fuels and where, in the UK, the average age of farmers is 58, this film follows 3 young people trying to get into agriculture in New Jersey in the US, each of whom has a passion for working with horses.

 

The Arab crisis: food, energy, water, justice

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In Tunisia, Mohamad Bouazizi did not rebel because he did not find a job reflecting his ambitions and education. He did not burn himself when a police officer confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling at a street-corner on the pretext he had no permit. But when he went to file a complaint to seek justice, his demand was rejected. It was this feeling of injustice that led Mohamed Bouazizi to his desperate act. 
 
 
 


The gutsy food sovereignty movement

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Participants in the food movement have actively taken on these “food security” or “food sovereignty” issues by creating substitutes to the industrialized food system including community-supported agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, local food, family and neighborhood gardens, farm-to-school initiatives, food as economic development, food policy councils, food assessment programs, and youth programming and training. And, they are beginning to make a difference in the way America eats.

Fertile inquiries: A very basic primer on creating and maintaining soil fertility

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Gardeners like to compete with each other over who has the worst soil. You wouldn’t think we’d be proud of this, but what can I say, we’re a strange bunch. One will argue for his hard clay, baked in the sun, another for her sand, without a trace of organic matter. I’ve got my own candidate for the worst soil ever – the stuff in the beds around my house.

Public health in the era of peak oil (Canada)

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For public health professionals, peak oil is significant because it will affect what are commonly called the social, environmental and economic determinants of health. For example, it will significantly affect, and require some reorganization of, our economic, transportation, and food systems. It is also important to public health professionals because it will very likely affect how health services are organized (the use of products and services dependent on petroleum permeates our health care system).

Food Connect – Robert Pekin

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As Brisbane cleans up after the floods, we’re also now hearing about the difficult times ahead. One of the major shortages ahead will be food. Not only have the farms been wiped out, but it’s going to take them years to re-establish crops and plantations. We’ve all heard about the problems at the Rocklea markets, but we haven’t heard about how food supplier, FoodConnect has been faring. Robert Pekin is the Executive Director of the Foodconnect Foundation.

Resource revolts: the year of living dangerously

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Rising food prices leading to riots, protests, and revolts, mounting oil prices, mammoth worldwide unemployment, and a collapsed recovery — it looks like the perfect set of preconditions for a global tsunami of instability and turmoil. Events in Algeria and Tunisia give us just an inkling of what this maelstrom might look like, but where and how it will next erupt, and in what form, is anyone’s guess.

 

Rising commodity prices and extreme weather events threaten global stability

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It’s not surprising then that food and energy experts are beginning to warn that 2011 could be the year of living dangerously — and so could 2012, 2013, and on into the future. Add to the soaring cost of the grains that keep so many impoverished people alive a comparable rise in oil prices — again nearing levels not seen since the peak months of 2008 — and you can already hear the first rumblings about the tenuous economic recovery being in danger of imminent collapse. Think of those rising energy prices as adding further fuel to global discontent.