Bringing the Deep Sea to Seattle
Ocean enthusiasts and random passersby alike came together in Seattle this past August to explore and celebrate their connection to the deep sea.
Food & Water featured
‘Praying for rain’: How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires
This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.
The Regenerative Agriculture Solution
The Flores González brothers’ revolutionary innovation has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible, source of fiber, biomass, water, and protein—the agave leaves or pencas—into a valuable animal feed, utilizing the natural process of anaerobic fermentation to transform the plant leaves’ relatively indigestible saponin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and sugar.
The Danish carbon tax for agriculture is no carbon tax at all
The failure of the Danish climate tax on agriculture is a result of a siloed science and policy with no consideration of the realities of agro-ecosystems. Landscape management need to be multi-faceted and not directed towards just one objective, be it climate regulation, maximum harvest, profit, bio-diversity or tourism.
The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying the World—We Urgently Need to Support Local Food Economies
Our food system is linked to an economic system fundamentally biased against what’s good for people and the planet.
The American food system creates chronic diseases; the medical system ‘manages’ them
“Metabolical”, a book by a medical researcher and physician, tell us that the relationship between our diet (heavy on processed foods) and chronic disease is far more profound than we’ve been told.
Farm to Table Goes International in Rural New York
While the Catskills have always produced juicy burgers and classic American fare, today there are restaurants serving up everything from Korean to French to Albanian cuisines, making these rural parts an unlikely nexus for urban foodies, farm-to-table enthusiasts, diner denizens and craft beer aficionados.
The Southwest Offers Blueprints for the Future of Wastewater Reuse
What’s clear is that the Colorado River can no longer be relied upon to meet the water needs of an increasing population. If we continue asking so much of it, we have to start easing those pressures. Water reuse is imperative if the driest parts of the world continue growing without destroying the environment that relies as much on water as we do.
All Hallows Eve
All Hallow’s Eve is the mid-point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In many ways it marks the end of the farmers year as well as the beginning of the next.
Smallholders: striving for autonomy
Having other income streams than farming is not only because you can’t live on small scale farming (you can’t) but also a way to allow you to run the farm according to your ideals rather than to the dictates of the market, banks or the government. A “day job” can in that way strengthen the autonomy or at least the feeling of autonomy
Fungi and forest gardens: 2 book reviews by Tomas Remiarz
There are plenty of books and websites telling you how forest gardens should work. I am more interested in how they do (and sometimes don’t) work, and in the people who are working in and with them.
The social life of a peasant
It didn’t take long before I realized that the social component of being a smallholder was more important to understand their situation than various economic theories, and that the way they farmed often was quite rational if one considered their total situation and not looked at farming as an isolated commercial enterprise.