Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This closed-loop approach to carbon sequestration would yield a world with both a safe climate and “communal low-tech luxury,” as Max Ajl calls it in his excellent book, A People’s Green New Deal. It is not just a vision for climate stability and justice but also beauty and comfort.
Feeding ourselves is a lot of things – it’s a network, it’s an event, it’s movement building – and it’s growing. First with CSAs, then agroecologists, then local food proponents, then those with wider food justice concerns, then environmentalists and ruralists, and now also conventional farmers from the region – in all their way, with their own diversities.
Every time I visit a farm, I have hope. Despite everything that’s going on, the fact that people are still producing so much food and thriving gives me hope.
By changing the reality on the ground, institutions and superstructures as well as cultures, we can create positive self-reinforcing feedback loops for change. Ignoring capitalism to death.
In the tradition of filtering air that we’ve polluted and treating water that we’ve sullied, we now have replacing minerals in soil that we’ve depleted because of industrial agriculture.
Volunteers, school teachers, and urban farmers in cities across the country are planting fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and other edible plants in public spaces to create shade, provide access to green space, and supply neighbors with free and healthy food.
After his experience living and volunteering on the farm in February, Matteo reflects on what El Manzano can teach us about some key ingredients of rural resilience: housing, labour and energy.
So learn where your water is flowing from and where it is flowing to. How do you affect groundwater viability when you turn on the tap? Ultimately, every drop that flows down the drain is lost to the ocean. So what amount of rainfall recharge is available to groundwater in your region — and is it enough?
The higher proportion of food that is globally traded, the bigger dependencies will be created, when regions that could produce their own food cease to do that.
Alberta’s water emergency, which is also a fire emergency, was foretold by scores of water scientists. They predicted that prolonged water scarcity would hit southern Alberta hard for stubborn geographical reasons.
Spring affords a time to see things from a new perspective — our work, our families and friends, our passions and beliefs. The perfect time to re- examine our world. We can start over. A new beginning.
The story of El Manzano can evoke a ‘flamenco’ approach to rural resilience, which is rooted in the living reality of peoples’ stories, and not in empty political frameworks and academic foresights.
