Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
There is ample evidence that some level of cotton production could fit into an ecologically sensitive farming system, yet the future of this crop in our climate relies on re-building organic matter, carbon levels, and dynamic microbial communities in the soil where the cotton is grown.
Among the range of intelligent and possible responses to impending conditions is to take direct action to increase your household and community food security. There are hundreds of ways to do that, including directly supporting your local farms, farmers markets, food coops, food hubs, community gardens, and so forth.
I believe it’s time now for a global “soilshot” to heal the land. Rebuilding healthy fertile soil on the world’s agricultural lands would require fundamental changes to agriculture, and a new agricultural philosophy.
Our objective is that, for whatever reason, biodynamics can really become the new agriculture. The objective is to gradually permeate the fields, the soils and the minds of the farmers.
Around 300 visitors have come to UC Elkus Ranch in Half Moon Bay for its annual Sheep to Shawl event when the farm gates are opened wide to anyone interested in getting a glimpse of the agrarian life.
“A great challenge of today,” the late Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess wrote, “is to save the planet from further devastation that violates both the enlightened self-interest of humans and non-humans, and decreases the potential of joyful existence for all.”
In my vision we see farming as landscape management and food is based on the landscape diet, i.e. that you eat food from the landscape you live in. Communities are jointly deciding on major principles of how the landscape is managed and take responsibility for that farmers can do their job in a good way – and eat the stuff from that land.
Seven years ago, two sustainable horticulture students took a field trip to an organic farm in the U.K. and were shocked to see cauliflowers left in the field due to their irregular shape or size. In reaction, they founded Food in Community, which aims to tackle food waste, food poverty, and social isolation in Totnes, England, by connecting producers with food banks and other distributors.
We’re never going to reach net zero emissions in the U.S. by 2030, as the Green New Deal calls for, without a profound change, in fact a revolution, in our food, farming, and land use practices.
As seed diversity plummets globally, securing varieties will likely become even more important. ICARDA counterparts and fellow genebanks in the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been lost due to human interventions and natural disasters, making the success of ICARDA’s move from Syria even more commendable.
I think that agroecology can be the solution to many woes of forest communities in the southwestern part of Ethiopia for the reasons mentioned above and more.
How have we allowed the public debate to conflate 100% plant-based diets with saving the planet? And in so doing, how on earth has the humble cow come to have taken 90% of the flak for global warming?
