Agriculture and Autonomy in the Middle East

By Sean Keller, Local Futures

In Rojava, a region in Syria also known as North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological vitality is taking place.

Dark Kitchen: Making Friends with Microbes

By Mark Watson, Dark Mountain Project

For thousands of years the arts of fermentation have transformed and preserved raw food in cultures across the world. Yet even though some of our strongest and most loved flavours – coffee, chocolate, cheese, salami, olives, as well as soy, miso and tempeh, wine and beer – are still alchemised via the life-death-life process of bacteria and yeasts, live, fizzing vegetables can be a challenge. 

Incredible Edible Todmorden Gives Free Access to Locally Grown Food to Everyone

By Khushboo Balwani, Shareable

The Incredible edible Todmorden movement has turned all the public spaces, from the front yard of a police station to railway stations, into farms filled with edible herbs and vegetables. Locals and tourists pluck fruits and vegetables for free.

Julie Kunen Discusses the Food Revolution in the Amazon

By McKenna Hayes, Food Tank

Julie Kunen, PhD, oversees conservation activities in 15 countries, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, as the Vice President of the Americas program for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). With a decades-long career in conservation, academia, and development, she is committed to uniting the worlds of food, sustainability, and conservation.

How Regenerative Food and Farming Can Reverse Rural Poverty and Forced Migration in the Americas

By Ronnie Cummins, Common Dreams

At the recent regional Summit on Migrants and Returnees in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala, October 20-21, a new and promising solution to the global “immigration crisis” emerged: the creation of local, grassroots-powered economic development projects based on regenerative food, farming and land-use practices. Regenerative food and farming is the new gold standard for climate and environmentally friendly agriculture and land use across the world.

Policy Making in a Globalized World: Is Economic Growth the Appropriate Driver?

By Andrea F. Schuman, UNRISD

Surely emphasis on increasing well-being should prevail over creation of investment opportunities that bring negative externalities and few benefits to the municipality. Other worlds are possible, and responsive policy making would be a chance to shape those possibilities.

This Isn’t Just Another Urban Farm—It’s a Food Bank

By Sammi-Jo Lee, YES! magazine

Partnerships between food banks and local agriculture are on the rise. Food banks are farming produce, recovering (or “gleaning”) agricultural surplus straight from the fields, building urban demonstration gardens and seed libraries, and teaching classes in underserved neighborhoods for those who want to grow food in their backyards or in balcony bucket gardens.

The Return of the Peasant: or, the History of the World in 10½ blog posts. 3. From the Ancient to the Medieval

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

In ideological terms, these developments eventually resulted in an impressive intellectual and political culture of the high middle ages involving notions of corporate identity and religious transcendence – one that was rigidly inegalitarian, albeit admitting to various critiques of the established hierarchy.

Eating Local Food in Bristol: From Farm to Table

By Steph Wetherell, Sustainable Food Trust

Getting your produce onto the plate of the end consumer is one of the key challenges for local food producers, who often face obstacles in the form of unpredictable orders and time consuming packaging and deliveries. One of the strengths of the food scene in Bristol is the variety of different routes available to producers; from innovative direct to customer models to businesses with a firm commitment to sourcing locally, Bristol is a city that is working hard to get its local food to the customer.

Foraging from Mother Earth

By Lottie Hedley, Future Perfect

Perplexed that no one was promoting Māori food, a New Zealand chef ventured to acquaint his people with their native flavors. Today, Charles Royal offers food tours and supplies sustainably foraged plants from the bush.

Reinvigorating Mid-Atlantic Waterways: Traditional and Artisanal Fishing

By Andrew Willner, Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub

For centuries before and after the European colonization of the Mid-Atlantic region of North America, fishing and shell fishing using traditional methods fed the people of our Bio-region.

How Green is my Alley: Public Produce on Public Lands

By Wayne Roberts, Medium

Public Produce: Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas and Streets for Healthier Cities is an unusually important book, if only because the topic is so unusual — how people in cities and towns can grow food on public lands.