Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I was recently invited to an Open Space event hosted by the Bowen (Island) Agricultural Alliance (BAA!) and facilitated by my friend Chris Corrigan. It was a small group — about two dozen — but most of the people there were farmers. With my Transition-based knowledge of permaculture and food security, it was a humbling and eye-opening experience.
• From farm to table
• Namu Gagi: San Francisco’s Natural Farm Restaurant
• UK faces food security catastrophe as honeybee numbers fall, scientists warn
• Five ways SRI practices and ideas can help "feed the world"
A central premise of the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project is the exploration of bean, grain, and edible seed varieties that can be added to those that are already grown in the Willamette Valley. The goal is to increase the diversity of staple crops as a way to add resilience to the regional food system. The edible seed of Chenopodium quinoa is a close fit.
Here’s what you need to know about how this week’s action in the House will affect hunger and poverty in America.
An open pollinated (OP) seed is a seed of value as it can grow into a plant true to the plant it was saved from.
• Congressional posturing: House Republicans (No Democrats) pass farm bill without food stamps •Can an urban food growing project cure a ‘sick city’? •Hipster hen dump: The issue of urban chicken abandonment •Small-scale producers key to attaining food security and ending hunger
-Order Your Chicken Rare: Nearly Lost Breeds Make a Comeback
-Qatar’s Renewable Energy Solution to Middle East Food Security Problem
-New York’s ‘Food Recycling’ Program Could Be The Future Of Waste And Energy
-15 Websites Saving the Environment by Changing the Food System
-Local Foodshed Mapping Tool for New York State
-50,000 Bumblebees die after neonicotinoid pesticide use in Oregon
•Science as Dialogue: What My Garden and I Are Discussing in 2013
•Biofuels a big cause of famine
•Food Price Inflation as Redistribution: Towards a New Analysis of Corporate Power in the World Food System
•Over half the world’s population could rely on food imports by 2050 – study
•Agriculture and Livestock Remain Major Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Continuing a decade-long increase, global food prices rose 2.7 percent in 2012, reaching levels not seen since the 1960s and 1970s but still well below the price spike of 1974. Between 2000 and 2012, the World Bank global food price index increased 104.5 percent, at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent.
IATP has always argued that trade agreements need to respect and promote human rights, not drive a process of globalization that privileges commercial interests and tramples on public interests. In a new paper on land grabs, we reaffirm that position.
A spontaneous, largely under-the-radar blue revolution is gaining steam in sub-Saharan Africa and has the potential to boost food security and incomes for tens of millions of the region’s poorest inhabitants.
Worms and termites are not likely to win hearts and minds, but they, along with lichens and microbes, are vital to food security, say biodiversity specialists who attended this month’s United Nations conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in this south Indian city.
