By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Since my book A Small Farm Future makes quite a play for local self-reliance, I thought I should at least temporarily try to put my money (or, more pertinently, my produce) where my mouth is by only eating food produced on my farm for a week.
By Johnny Sanphillipo, Strong Towns
But personally I prefer an arrangement that allows for a high degree of resilience and a kind of Plan B insurance against unlikely but highly disruptive events. Our present institutional systems work remarkably well…until they don’t.
By Peter Ruddock, Green Omnivore
It’s estimated that at least 50,000 people in California at least occasionally sell meals that they cook at home. Most of them have no idea that what they are doing is illegal. The Homemade Food Operations Act (AB 626), would change this, making it legal to sell certain meals made in a home kitchen in California.
By Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer
Farm commentators are remarking somewhat in surprise that the new move towards local food production and backyard farming are much more in evidence in and around cities than out where the big tractors lumber over the landscape.
By Janaia Donaldson, Peak Moments Television
A tour of Gord and Ann Baird’s edible landscape starts at the off-grid chicken house and yard, containing fruit trees that provide a protective canopy against flying predators.
By Brian Kelly, Future Perfect
In Reading, the United States’ second poorest city, the residents’ group Permacultivate is practicing and preaching local food production.
By Alex Smith, Marjory Wildcraft, Radio Ecoshock
Oil guru Richard Heinberg on life after fossil fuels. Marjory Wildcraft: why you may want to grow your own groceries.
By Pete Huff, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
By looking at best practices in high tunnel use and Farm to School activities, the report identifies innovative approaches with the potential for linking the two practices more effectively.
By Sandra Postel, National Geographic Newswatch
A surprisingly large share of the world’s cropland is found not in rural areas, but within cities and their immediate surroundings.
By CUESA Staff, Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture
Regardless of mainstream attempts to co-opt the label, a truly artisanal food movement—based in craft, community, tradition, and innovation—is alive and kicking. For these businesses, growth is not something to take lightly; it’s a delicate dance between staying true to one’s values while adapting to new economies of scale.
By Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
Throughout human history, particularly in indigenous cultures, food has been perceived as sacred. The word sacred is not a religious term but rather one that simply means “set apart” or not of the ordinary. It is also related to sacrifice which may mean that something is sacred because it derived from something sacrificed. For example, we speak of battlefields and military cemeteries as sacred. In ancient times, some temples, mountains, or forests were sacred because animals were sacrificed to a god in those places. All food is sacred in the sense that the life of a plant or animal has been sacrificed to feed another being.
By Shannon Hayes, YES! magazine
“But can we feed the world this way?” As we try to move humanity away from dominant power regimes and thoughtless extraction of the earth’s resources, toward a way of life that honors the earth and all of her creatures, I think this is the most maddening question we can be asking ourselves.