Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How can the necessary relocalisation of food systems be reconciled with a need for exchange based on mutual aid, complementarity, and reciprocity? Can local biodiversity (and its products) support territorially grounded agricultural economies while also nurturing the emergence of spaces for innovation and cooperation across diverse realities?
A national human ecology curriculum that begins with food education could help address our most pressing crises—from climate change to inequality—by teaching students how to live well and care for one another.
I have hauled a lot of buckets of water across the street, trying to make up for the less than 1.5″ of rain in my rain gauge for all of August. For comparison, my town’s August average is 3.5″, and in the last two years my gauge has seen over 9″ — both prior Augusts following on July floods, whereas this year July barely hit average precipitation.
On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy to discuss the importance of water and hydrology and the complex ways they impact our planet.
The certified organic system is part of the capitalist economic system. It makes it ”realistic” but it also forces it to adapt to the system in order to be successful. And as the system as a whole is not sustainable, it can also not be sustainable in the long run.
We are not powerless. Every time we make a purchase, especially with our food, there are consequences to our health and the health of our environment.
To find satisfaction you have to have an encounter with the real world and absorb its great subtleties. It’s difficult to make the deep connections about food without meeting the people that grow the plants or bake the bread, or doing those things yourself.
The developments of the organic certification system is today driven by the actors who have a vested interest in it, such as the standard-setters, certification bodies, government bureaucrats and consultants; not by the farmers, food producers, consumers and the trade they are supposed to serve.
So what’s a solution we can live with, as farmers? Here on the Roussière Farm, we have chosen to feed the people around us. For a little over seven years now, we’ve been taking our animals to the slaughterhouse ourselves, preparing our own meat boxes, and selling the meat we produce within 20 kilometers of our pastures.
…I think I would do better for myself and for the planet if I bought my food from local farmers, those that I know are using the least harmful methods of growing food.
It is clear that the EU support for farmers will be reduced given the concerns over EU’s security and increased defence spending, which I find logical in the current geopolitical context. All farmers will have to tighten their belts. However, I remain optimistic about organic farming, as more and more people in Lithuania are looking for such products. This trend is driving me forward.
There is a temptation to view rooftop farming as a novelty or a lifestyle trend, especially in middle-class contexts. But Living Greens work resists that narrative. It regrounds urban farming in the needs of ordinary people; farmers looking for dignified work, households seeking healthier food, and communities preparing for climate disruption.
