Flash droughts: Are they the new normal?
Drought conditions are sneaking up on us much more quickly, more often than in the past.
grain farming
The grain giants have made a bonanza from hunger. Time to take them apart
As economies tumble, inflation surges and global food prices soar to critically high levels, two sectors seem to have hit the jackpot in 2022 – energy giants and grain traders.
Giving Good Grains a Better Future
While grains have fallen from grace in the rise of fad diets and industrialisation, they remain an essential food that has nourished human societies for thousands of years – we should make sure they continue to be a healthy and valuable food source going forward.
The Three Causes of Global Ecocide
In a recent post I questioned the well-known formula: Human Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology. But I don’t question that humans now have a severe impact on earth systems. So if not PAT, then what? Here I’m going to lay out some other factors that I suggest underlie our impact and our present predicament in a more fundamental sense than the PAT variables.
The Future of Wheat
“It’s important that we take care to do things right, not to rush, and to make sure that the power in these new economies is equitable, There is always the danger of re-building the old system and re-commodifying these precious seeds.”
The Staple Food Revolution: Bringing Beans and Grains to Local Markets
After a couple of years as growers, Jaeger and Ajamian realized that they couldn’t build a local food system without a local processing facility, and they opened Shagbark in a former carpet warehouse in 2010. Now, they say that with each passing year at Shagbark, they find more and more reasons why local and regional processing facilities for staple foods are important.
Flour Power
As Trevino highlights, the struggle to transform industrial grain is no small battle. If All Purpose Flour is a symptom of a sociopolitical logic determined to concentrate power and quash difference, then fixing the problem starts with reasserting the distinctive ecological and social fabric of diverse communities.
Future farms will be ecosystems that produce bountiful food
Healthy land needs diversity. Have you ever seen a patch of wild nature occupied by just one species?
Till or spray? The question facing dryland grain farmers
On Montana’s northern plains, some organic growers’ neighbors reportedly began referring to them as “weed farmers” a few decades ago. These organic pioneers had started to seed small, green plants in hopes of strengthening their soil.