Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Succession bridges the gap between generations. The link between the past and the future, it allows us to envisage the future – in continuity or forging new paths – informed by previous failures and successes.
The promise of conservation agriculture to bring life back to the land and support biodiversity both above and belowground should appeal to environmentalists and farmers alike. For like it or not, a large part of nature will be what lives on farms, because we now use more than a third of the world’s ice-free land area for growing crops and raising animals.
Nyhart believes this network of trust strengthens Market Box’s work and their ties to the community. “Some recipients may ask for an extra bag for a neighbor who needs food, too. That makes it easier for us to reach folks who need the help,” she said.
However, for the Green New Deal to accomplish its climate goals, it must spur two large-scale transitions: the transition away from fossil fuel use toward renewable energy, and the transition away from industrial agriculture, a huge polluter and greenhouse gas emitter in its own right, toward organic regenerative practices that draw down and sequester carbon.
Two groups on the West Coast, Chico Flax in the Sacramento Valley of California and Fibrevolution in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, are now leading the revitalization of the flax textile industry in the region. Groups in other regions of North America, such as the Cleveland Flax Project in the Rust Belt Fibershed, are also doing this work.
In today’s world, we can choose what I’ll call the neo-local choice. For the first time in history, it really is a choice. It’s not imposed by old technologies that offered no alternatives but the food at hand.
Should food be grown in cities? If so, how? These questions have a long history, with the last few hundred years taking in the Garden City movement where towns were designed to include homes, industry and agriculture, the ‘Victory Gardens’ of the First and Second World Wars and, more recently, the food miles debate.
The goal is to actually draw out some kind of a map. What are the physical infrastructural needs? How do things work together? How do we feed millions of people as opposed to – even if we’re starting with small amounts of people in communities at a time – how does that add up to the millions that are out there that need to be fed?
