“A big part of the crisis in Somalia is not just that people used to be able to farm for subsistence and now can’t; there are lots of people whose purchasing power has been badly eroded. There is food on the market in much of Somalia, but people can’t afford it.” I pray that this is not status quo for the future all over the world. While we have the opportunity we must learn to grow our own. Read the rest of this timely article…

A very prescient quote from Bill Mollison, the founder of Permaculture:

“. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people.

Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home.

The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands.

It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.”

An excellent article from the NY Times on Detroit. What’s happening there is applicable elsewhere. As folks become more aware of where their food comes from, and better yet, how to grow it, in our devastated cities, there will be massive change around the issues of our basic necessities.

“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water” – Benjamin Franklin

Our most precious resource? And then there was soil. When it becomes demineralized beyond all repair, food also becomes something we just may come to understand the worth of.

This is not meant to freak people out, but how aware are we? Is it that Japan is “over there” just like so many other natural “disasters” and wars. When will we begin to take a look at our consumptive ways? Consume, consume, consume! Get the leaf blower out and blow all that organic matter away, away, away… Don’t want to finish my meal, flush the poopy away, away, away… But the tires on my bicycle are flat. Let’s take the petroleum guzzler to the supermarket to get them thar veggies that have been shipped in all the way from Argentina.

Japan May Need 200,000 Extra Barrels of Oil Daily, IEA Says

Where, might you ask, will this come from?

The American Dream

As a follow up to my previous blog post and the article about Monsanto here is another article that focuses, as usual, only on large market economies and the rise on a global scale of food prices. Why are we so keen to focus only on national and international economies when the best, and only, solution is to shrink our purview and, as we say in the trade, get local? We have seen countless, seemingly unending, times that when we kowtow to big politics we somehow miss the boat. Where has this path led us? It is all too obvious. And now with all the momentous change in the Mideast and thereabouts, home to a significant amount of the world’s black juice, whither the skyscraper, the John Deere, the automobile and the home mechanical: heat, electric, etc, et al, ad nauseum? The debate is on and the media sucks up to it relentlessly, when the only solution to these age old issues, lies in the backyard with our hands in the soil, our own relentlessness to plant seeds, harvest, save seed and replant the following year. Or better yet, TREES! Yet another NY Times debate…

Chris Martenson nails this thing. What can we learn from this? On this scale will things really change? Hasn’t history taught us that prosperity follows poverty and vise versa? This article struck me, especially the discussion about Egypt’s oil production. Maybe the rebellion will inspire those that live there to go the way that Cuba did after the Soviet Union imploded and stopped sending oil, food, etc. to the island. An important read.

This letter was written by Michael Pollan for the NY Times before Obama took office. It is a powerful piece of writing and it is still potent and current. I give this letter to all of my students, pre-course, and encourage them to read it. Mr Pollan has written some very inspiring pieces on healthy food choices, gardening, natural history and much more. Worth the time and effort.