Deepwater Horizon spill: the aftermath cont’d. – Sept 9
-Toxic dispersants in Gulf oil spill creating hidden marine crisis
-Gulf Doctors Advised to Learn to Treat Oil-Related Illnesses
-Oxygen drops near BP spill but no “dead zone”-US
Food
A meditation on Meat: a benign extravagance – Sept 9
-I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly
-A benign extravagance
-The water footprint: the hidden cost of our meat consumption
Large scale land investments do not benefit local communities
In April 2010, more than 120 farmers’ groups and non-governmental organizations all across the world signed a statement declaring their opposition to the guiding principles endorsed by the World Bank, the FAO, IFAD and UNCTAD on “responsible” land investments.
The Egg Hunter
This year’s favorite hideout is a pile of hay I put in the machine shed “temporarily” when rain was threatening and I didn’t have time to add it to the outside stack. The photo shows one of these hay pile nests (yes, those are old crosscut saws hanging on the wall behind the nest along with my broadcast seeder, called by some modern garden farmers a “hand-cranked thingie”).
Deconstructing Dinner: Local food fraud, an investigation
An exclusive behind-the-scenes investigative report taking an in-depth look into alleged local food fraud. In May 2010, Deconstructing Dinner received a tip from a farmer in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia who alleged that a local business who sells eggs to 18 retailers and restaurants and who was marketing their product as being predominantly from their own farm, was not true. According to the tip, the “farm” was not a farm at all, and housed no chickens on the property!
Why learn permaculture? For the children and ourselves
Permaculture is one of the only ways home for humanity. If one believes in modernism, industrial agriculture and better living through chemistry read no further. However, if you feel something is not right about the way we live, read on.
Food rebellions: Mozambicans know which way the wind blows
To see how climate change will play out in the twenty-first century, look to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique’s ‘food riots’ to see what happens when extreme natural phenomena interact with our unjust social and economic systems.
We reap what we have sown
When a friend lent me his copy of Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution (republished last year by the New York Review of Books), I was struck by one sentence in particular. Somewhere in the middle of this charming, eccentric book, one of the founding texts of natural, non-interventionist farming, Fukuoka asserts that “the one-acre farmer of long ago spent January, February and March hunting rabbits in the hills”. Later on, he says that while cleaning his village shrine he found dozens of haikus, composed by local people, on hanging plaques; but “there is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song”.
Food & agriculture Take 2: More feeding the world worries and is organic food finally really better?
-Land grabs, biofuel demand raise global food-security risk
-Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Study Finds
-Fears grow over global food supply
Time management for overworked people or planning the harvest
It is manifestly the case that I have never fully mastered keeping things from getting overwhelming, but I get better at it every year (mostly). And there is a lot you can do to make sure that the canning and preserving don’t make you crazy!
An exemplary garden at 7,400 feet altitude
Boulder, where I live, is approximately 5,430 feet above sea level, or just over a mile. This flatlander is a rather nervous high mountain roads passenger but the other day I looked forward to the opportunity to see a garden at 7,400 feet. What was being accomplished at this site far exceeded my expectations. The property, at nearly the top of a mountain road, was being gardened both ornamentally and for food growing.
Food: Growing community food systems
Food systems can be a very powerful tool for resilience. In a revolutionary way, you can completely transform things without people realizing what’s happening–they are aware, but it just makes intuitive sense this way. It’s also not about just going out and fighting the proverbial "man," or continuing an academic dialogue about what could happen or should happen; you don’t have time for this because you’ve got a lot to do.
