For Whom the Bell Tolls: a Small Farm Future COVID-19 Special

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

In times of crisis, especially in urban situations, a lot of the usual individualist concerns drop away and people create ingenious new commons to get by, ‘paradises built in hell’ in the resonant phrase of Rebecca Solnit. But I’d argue the longer and larger task is to dwell less on this transient commoning and focus instead on building the conditions in which people can create their own livelihoods renewably and locally as individuals-in-communities.

Edible Acres at Powell Gardens Feed and Educate Students to Chefs

By Lisa Waterman Gray, Food Tank

Approximately 45-minutes drive from Kansas City, Powell Gardens’ Heartland Harvest Garden is America’s largest edible landscape, providing the perfect backdrop for culinary events and education. It’s a place where 60 students capped off a recent visit by helping to make salsa and where a two-year-old CSA is in full swing.

A Resilient Food System for Syrians

By Bonnie Welch, Sustainable Food Trust

For Syria, small-scale, autonomous farming offers a model of inspiration for the challenges that lie ahead in terms of weakened food security, the use of food as a weapon and the vulnerability of farming livelihoods. In the long run, planting it as an idea may well be the most important thing to do.

Helping Refugees Become Sustainable Farmers

By Lisa Gray, Food Tank

On a recent Saturday, the Overland Park, Kansas, Farmers’ Market bustled with customers by 7:30 a.m. Amid dozens of vendors, four graduates from the New Roots for Refugees program sold sustainably grown kale, plump cucumbers, enormous scallions, bright red cherry tomatoes, and more.

A Marginal Farm Anniversary

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

To love the farming in a global economic context that writes its economic bottom line in diesel is not only a hard thing, but a conflicted thing. I can’t claim to have extracted myself from those dismal economics but my good fortune is that, on the ground and on the page, at least I’ve found some opportunities to try.

Talkin’ bout a Revolution: a Response to the Breakthrough Institute

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

The Breakthrough Institute have published a response to my critical commentary on a recent post of theirs. Here I continue the debate, because I think it might clarify some worthwhile issues. I

Grown in Totnes

By Charlotte Oliver, Permaculture Association

An exciting food project called Grown in Totnes has started trading in this South Devon market town, selling processed grains, peas and flours to local shops, bakers and colleges.

An Eco-Futurist Miscellany

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

More on organic farming, trade-offs, energy futures and small-farm definitions in this post. Veritably, it’s your one stop shop for a pick ‘n’ mix of eco-futurism…partly because indeed I have a few addendums to report on recent posts, and partly because despite my flippant recent remarks, I’m a bit too busy on the farm and on other things just now to put together a properly structured post.

Complicating the Commons

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

Politically and intellectually, it seems like the idea of the commons is gaining traction – probably because the state and the market, its major rivals, have acquired something of an image problem in recent times. Politically, ‘the state’ has become associated with the unresponsive, centrally planned economies of communist regimes, and ‘the market’ with the flagrant inequalities and value-scouring short-termism of contemporary capitalism and/or neoliberalism.

Modern Small-Scale Farming: Could it Sustain Us? Could we Sustain It?

By Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns

The persistent question for me as we explore local food issues here at Strong Towns is: Could any of our communities actually survive on local food alone? Could we ever get to a point where local food makes up most of our diets and where local farmers are successfully supplying that? These questions (inspired by the Strong Towns Strength Test) have been buzzing in the back of my mind and, while I want to believe it’s feasible to live off of local food, the more I study this, the more I realize it would be pretty darn tough, if not impossible.

Want to Get “Back to the Land”? You’re Not Alone

By Nancy Matsumoto, YES! magazine

Over the past century, generations of young people have turned their backs on city life to embrace small-scale farming and back-to-the-land ideals. The…

Why are Small Farms Important to Britain?

By Kathleen Steeden, Sustainable Food Trust

Besides deregulation and competition from large-scale agribusinesses, there’s a new factor casting uncertainty over the future of Britain’s small farms: the ‘B’ word. Since the EU referendum in summer 2016, there’s been much uncertainty around what future farming policy will look like.