Fixing Food and Farming with a True-Cost Economy
A paradigm shift is underway in our nation’s approach to food and agriculture.
sustainable agriculture
Fear and action
Fear. It’s that chill that creeps up your spine. That awful, churning hot knot, deep in the pit of your stomach. The tremble that makes your hands feel powerless. The freeze-up, that tempts you to inaction.
The Next Green Revolution (This Time Without Fossil Fuels)
A method of growing crops called the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) produces yields that can be four or five times higher than other methods.
Urbanites help sustain Japan’s historic rice paddy terraces
If flocks of city-dwellers will trek to steep hillside paddies to work in the damp spring weather, then nothing seems impossible.
Farmers respond to climate change
City dwellers may have enjoyed the sunshine during one of the driest winters on record, but the unseasonable weather has many farmers worried, and with good reason: their livelihoods hang in the balance. Fluctuations in weather do not necessarily indicate changes in climate, but climate change does impact the weather. Fearing the current weather patterns could be the new normal, California farmers are paying close attention to the forecast.
Pasture cropping: A regenerative solution from down under
Since the late 1990s, Australian farmer Colin Seis has been successfully planting a cereal crop into perennial pasture on his sheep farm during the dormant period using no-till drilling, a method that uses a drill to sow seeds instead of the traditional plow. He calls it pasture cropping and he gains two crops this way from one parcel of land—a cereal crop for food or forage and wool or lamb meat from his pastures—which means its potential for feeding the world in a sustainable manner is significant.
Growing sustainable citrus and soil
Ken Olsen is not just growing delicious oranges and mandarins; he’s growing a healthy ecosystem. “It’s like paradise here,” the citrus farmer says of Olsen Organic Farm in Lindsay, 180 miles southeast of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. While conventional citrus farmers rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to maintain large, monocultural orchards, Ken sees his organic farming practices as an extension of his reverence for the natural world.
What is holistic livestock management?
Holistic management seeks to restore grassland ecosystems by using livestock as a proxy for the wild herds of grazing ruminants that the prairies and savannas of the world co-evolved with and depend on.