Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From farm to plate, the modern food system relies heavily on cheap oil. Threats to our oil supply are also threats to our food supply. As food undergoes more processing and travels farther, the food system consumes ever more energy each year.
The EU has banned the import of US corn feed. The new embargo has further strained a trade relationship already tense over genetically modified food, Airbus subsidies, and the weapons embargo against China.
More than 16 per cent of the European Union’s land is affected by soil degradation, but in the accession countries more than a third is affected, according to the first Soil Atlas of Europe, published last week.
A two hour radio show featuring an interview with Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute and a presentation on the ‘New Agrarianism’ from the First National Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions by Charles Stevens.
I see food as a powerful unifying force in society, it has been so throughout our history….
Food is the vehicle, community is the destination.
I look forward to the day when farmers claim their rightful place in society as the first line of defense in our health care system and are properly compensated for their work.
Worldwide production of essential crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soya beans is likely to be hit much harder by global warming than previously predicted.
An approximately 6,000-square-foot yard provides generous space for a bustling urban farm. From the street it is impossible to tell that the property holds everything from apple trees to tomato vines, rabbits to goats, and chickens to domesticated pigeons.
The British may waste more food than any other nation, throwing out 30-40% of all the produce they buy and grow each year, according to research. … modern food production methods may appear efficient, “but the reality is that large-scale manufacturing and rigid supply chains are creating very significant quantities of waste”.
[Cuba has] created what may be the world’s largest working model of a semi-sustainable agriculture, one that doesn’t rely nearly as heavily as the rest of the world does on oil, on chemicals, on shipping vast quantities of food back and forth… No one’s predicting a collapse like the one Cuba endured – probably no modern economy has ever undergone such a shock. But if things got gradually harder? … It’s somehow useful to know that someone has already run the experiment.
World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years… The Independent Science Panel (ISP) and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) are launching a Sustainable World initiative to engage with all sectors of civil society to make our food production system truly sustainable.
A permaculture response to Peak Oil. There’s hope for the suburbs yet!
As fuel costs skyrocket, many businesses are struggling
