Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
American society seems to have lost its old prejudices against farmers since the hick and hayseed days and in fact the small, local variety is probably being canonized more than we deserve. But the class conflict between city and country is still around.
…Kunstler has a new work of social criticism titled Too Much Magic, his first nonfiction book since The Long Emergency came out in 2005. The book is an inquiry into a skewed, delusional perception of reality that Kunstler thinks has become “baseline normal for the American public lately.” Americans, he says, have been led astray by the incredible technological advancements of recent times. We’ve come to believe that any problem we face is solvable—as if by magic—with the application of some new technology.
An urbanizing world requires major policy initiatives to make urban resource use compatible with the world’s ecosystems. Metropolitan Adelaide has adopted this agenda and is well on its way to becoming a pioneering regenerative city region. New policies by the government of South Australia on energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, zero waste, organic waste composting, water efficiency, wastewater irrigation of crops, peri-urban agriculture, and reforestation have taken Adelaide to the forefront of eco-friendly urban development. Working as a thinker in residence in Adelaide in 2003, I proposed linking policies to reduce urban eco-footprints and resource use with the challenge of building a green economy.
Larry Elliot writes in the Gaurdian that ‘the era of cheap food may be over’. He’s absolutely right in one crucial fact; the world faces some tough decisions. Aside from that, however, this was an article from a business desk: a lightened version of human and environmental damage and a broken agricultural system that agricultural solutions will fix. But it’s the wider problem that needs to be addressed.
-An open letter to Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary
-“The 1%”: The Pluses and Minuses of an Historic Term
-We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say
“Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson
“That’s a pithy way of saying where our country, perhaps the developed world, is at right now,” notes author James Howard Kunstler. We’ve blown past the mileposts for global peak oil, says Kunstler in his new book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation, and we expect technology to save us.
Shockingly (or not so much, if you read here regularly), despite the supposed improvements in the economy, more and more American families are struggling to put meals on the table. The USDA reports a record 46.7 million American households are on food stamps. 17.9 % of American households (up 700,000 from 2010) didn’t have enough food at least some of the time.
Weekend mornings are the busiest days of the week at D-Town Farm. That’s when up to 30 volunteers from across Detroit come out to till the earth and tend the crops at the seven-acre mini-farm on the city’s west side. They sow, hoe, prune, compost, trap pest animals, build paths and fences, and harvest—all the activities necessary to grow healthy organic fruits and vegetables to nurture the community. There is a 1.5-acre vegetable garden, a 150-square-foot garlic plot, a small apple orchard, numerous beds of salad greens in a couple of hoop houses, a small apiary, and a plot of medicinal herbs such as purslane, burdock, and white thistle.
A comprehensive paper on the nutritional quality and safety of conventional versus organic food was published in the September 4, 2012 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. The Stanford University Medical School team concluded that:
“The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods.”
“Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
After months of waiting, worrying and hoping, the clouds finally arrived here at Yellabird Farm last week and brought us the long-sought gift of good rain. It was a great two days of slow and soaking moisture that the cracked soil guzzled up with gusto. Seven inches was the tally. And it has brightened up the spirits of all of us: man, woman, child, goat, chicken, cow, clover, oak tree, frog, songbird. The whole living community around here is crying out with joy.
The drought parching harvests in several of the world’s most productive food baskets is the summer’s hottest global food story. Eerily, it’s matched by the season’s hottest archeological finding, which comes across as a cautionary tale…History seems to be repeating itself for the second of the western hemisphere’s great empires entirely dependent on a food supply centered around corn and an energy system bent on deforestation…But what I saw in Honduras confirms there is life after plantation-style fields of corn.
A little over a week to go until the Transition Network conference 2012, and it is all getting very exciting. The idea here is to put some flesh on the bones of what looks set to be our most stimulating conference yet. Although things are still being finalised, here’s what we know so far…
