I don't know about you, but I am finding more than enough things to amuse me. I thought that on house arrest I might have to resort to cleaning, but so far I've only tackled a few deferred chores. There are so many extra opportunities in the knitting community I feel a bit overwhelmed with the choices. I've got food on hand, exchanges on the Bean Club Facebook group are frequent, and I will go out to the community garden to check on a few young things and to harvest the last of the sprouting broccoli and some more over-wintered chard.
But now there is this: a one hour zoomed learning opportunity each day starting Monday the 23rd. 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific.
https://slowfoodusa.org/slow-food-live/
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Friday, March 6, 2020
The End of Farming?
I'm not quite clear what the point of view of this article is, but it offers a nice ramble through the changes - or not - in British agriculture and rural land uses. There are many resonances here with our own issues in the United States. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/the-end-of-farming-rewilding-intensive-agriculture-food-safety
"Intensive agriculture prioritises a bumper harvest – the annual dividend – while the new approach [re-wilding, also known as environmentally friendly regeneration] emphasises the preservation of the initial capital – the land itself."
One of the farmers quoted in the article, of the conventional-intensive sort, opines "that there is no in-between."
Really? It seems that part of the press to maintain the get-big-or-get-out, input heavy style of farming as we have recently known it, is the need to feed more people in the coming decades. But I have to ask - isn't it just colonialism to think it our (affluent westerners) responsibility to feed the world? What about helping the 2/3rds world to develop appropriate, sustainable technologies to feed themselves? What about joining in the fight globally for economic and political reforms that increase access to land for small scale farmers? And why, on the home front here and in Britain, is it so black and white that we cannot encourage no-till practices, the restoration of hedgerows, and the return of mixed farming even in large-scale agriculture?
"Intensive agriculture prioritises a bumper harvest – the annual dividend – while the new approach [re-wilding, also known as environmentally friendly regeneration] emphasises the preservation of the initial capital – the land itself."
One of the farmers quoted in the article, of the conventional-intensive sort, opines "that there is no in-between."
Really? It seems that part of the press to maintain the get-big-or-get-out, input heavy style of farming as we have recently known it, is the need to feed more people in the coming decades. But I have to ask - isn't it just colonialism to think it our (affluent westerners) responsibility to feed the world? What about helping the 2/3rds world to develop appropriate, sustainable technologies to feed themselves? What about joining in the fight globally for economic and political reforms that increase access to land for small scale farmers? And why, on the home front here and in Britain, is it so black and white that we cannot encourage no-till practices, the restoration of hedgerows, and the return of mixed farming even in large-scale agriculture?
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