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QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You previously mentioned that we can grow crops inside warehouses without the sun or soil. How did mankind survive the last mini Ice Age with dropping temperatures as we have seen in recent winters here in Europe?

ANSWER: With each cycle, we tend to improve upon technology. Being able to grow food inside will be an important advance for us during this cycle. We will be able to colonize other planets with this technology. You can set one up in your basement.

Previously, there was the invention of the fruit wall which appeared around the beginning of the Little Ice Age that ran the course of about 200 years from 1550 to 1850.

The invention of the fruit wall saved society. They built walls which reflected sunlight during the day essentially using solar energy to improve growing conditions. These walls also absorbed solar heat, which in turn was slowly released during the night, preventing frost damage. They created a warmer microclimate 24 hours per day.

Fruit walls also protected crops from cold blasts of winds from the north as we are experiencing today. They eventually began to construct wooden canopies to shield the fruit trees from rain and hail. They would also use mats suspending then from the walls in case of bad weather. I remember my grandfather loved figs and he had fig trees he would wrap during the winter to protect them in New Jersey. In Europe, these fruit walls were used as far north as England and the Netherlands.

Conrad Gessner (1516 – 1565) was a true Renaissance man. He was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, philologist, zoologist, and a botanist. He wrote of the effect of the Fruit Walls which then popularized them in Europe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Three acres and a cow

February 9, 2018

Three acres and a cow

My title comes from a 19^th century English song, which includes this verse…

If all the land in England was divided up quite fair / There would be work for everyone to earn an honest share / Well some have thousand acre farms which they have got somehow / But I’ll be satisfied to get three acres and a cow

…but more immediately, it comes from a great evening of folksong and storytelling I heard recently in which Robin Grey and Katherine Hallewell told – well, not quite the history of the world in 10½ blog posts so much as the history of the fight for access to land by ordinary people in Britain in 11 lovely folk songs. If you get a chance to see the show, I’d thoroughly recommend it (and for those in my neck of the woods, it’s returning to Frome on 10 March). It’s not quite as comprehensive as my recent historithon here at Small Farm Future, but it’s a darned sight more tuneful.

The main aim of this post, though, isn’t to talk about the show so much as to pick up on a couple of themes hanging over from various previous posts and post cycles. In particular, I want to address a point that Ruben made in a comment concerning the need for a sustainable post-capitalist society to produce an agrarian surplus in order to fund a division of labour and thus a viably diverse social order. I want to marry it with what I called my 99/1 test (in which a food-farm system is defined as sustainable if it can persist with 99% of food sourced from within 10 miles of any given retail point and with fossil energy use set at 1% of the current level).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Resisting Tyranny: Struggling for Seed Sovereignty in Latin America

February 1, 2018

Resisting Tyranny: Struggling for Seed Sovereignty in Latin America

The Latin America Seeds Collective has just released a 40-minute film (‘Seeds: Common or Corporate Property?) which documents the resistance of peasant farmers to the corporate takeover of their agriculture.

The film describes how seed has been central to agriculture for 10,000 years. Farmers have been saving, exchanging and developing seeds for millennia. Seeds have been handed down from generation to generation. Peasant farmers have been the custodians of seeds, knowledge and land.

This is how it was until the 20^th century when corporations took these seeds, hybridised them, genetically modified them, patented them and fashioned them to serve the needs of industrial agriculture with its monocultures and chemical inputs.

To serve the interests of these corporations by marginalising indigenous agriculture, a number of treaties and agreement over breeders’ rights and intellectual property have been enacted to prevent peasant farmers from freely improving, sharing or replanting their traditional seeds. Since this began, thousands of seed varieties have been lost and corporate seeds have increasingly dominated agriculture.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90 percent of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

To move farmers away from using native seeds and to get them to plant corporate seeds, the film describes how seed ‘certification’ rules and laws are brought into being by national governments on behalf of commercial seed giants like Monsanto. In Costa Rica, the battle to overturn restrictions on seeds was lost with the signing of a free trade agreement with the US, although this flouted the country’s seed biodiversity laws.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Flavour of Good Farming

January 26, 2018

The Flavour of Good Farming

Earlier this month, I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, where I was thrilled to be immersed in lively discussion about the power of sustainable food production systems to change the world for the better. Real farming holds the promise to restore lost biodiversity to the rural landscape, preserve critically endangered breeds, sequester carbon, reduce exposure of plants and animals to antimicrobials, pesticides and antibiotics, and secure the future health and vitality of the soil.

But there was one important element missing, and for a conference all about better food production, it was particularly striking. Flavour was absent from the discussion.

The sustainable food movement’s relationship with gastronomic considerations is problematic. No one would deny that ecologically and morally reprehensible farming systems can be optimised to provide hyper-palatable, nutritionally-bereft foods whose only appeal – other than its cheapness – is to the brain’s natural proclivity for the compelling combination of salt, sugar and fat. At the other end of the economic spectrum, haute gastronomic culture, with its £1000 bottles of wine, smacks uncomfortably of elitism.

But hiding within this emotional tangle is an opportunity to re-valorise farming that is ecologically scrupulous, biodiversity-enhancing and demanding of exemplary animal welfare through a conversation about great flavour. Critically, this is a strategy to extend the attraction of these farming systems and their potential social impact far beyond the realm of already-converted eco-warriors. If we care about increasing the reach of sustainable farming, it is our moral duty to address, and ultimately bridge, this rift between the sustainable food movement and the importance of flavour.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trading away our future?

January 22, 2018

Trading away our future?

Early trade was about ecological adaptation, transporting essential food or other essential goods to a places where they were lacking. Very little in present international trade is based on that. Instead, trade in itself creates shortages. Today, Sweden only produces half the beef it consumes. This is not because there is no land or resources available in Sweden. On the contrary, the country has let a million hectares of meadows revert to forest and a lot of arable land is idle – or grazed by horses that people keep for a hobby. International trade can be a safety valve for food shocks by moving food from one part of the world to the other. Yet it has dramatically reduced each region’s self-sufficiency and made all of us dependent on global supply chains for our daily food. Some of the trade is really difficult to understand or justify. More or less identical products are exported and imported by the same countries. As the ecological economist Herman Daly points out: “Americans import Danish sugar cookies and Danes imports American sugar cookies. Exchanging recipes would surely be more efficient”.[1]

It is a mistake to conclude that there is a linear process driving farmers into increased levels of commercialization. In times of collapsing markets, natural disasters, unrest or war, self-sufficiency and non-market exchange is bound to play a bigger role. The Roman peri-urban sprawl with agricultural estates, villas, engaged in intensive commercial production went the same way as the Empire. At the fall of Rome the area fell into neglect and finally reverted to extensive pastoralism.[2] The pastoral beauty of this Roman Campagna inspired the painters who flocked into Rome in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, when it was the most painted landscape in Europe.[3]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Farming for a Small Planet

January 12, 2018

Farming for a Small Planet

People yearn for alternatives to industrial agriculture, but they are worried. They see large-scale operations relying on corporate-supplied chemical inputs as the only high-productivity farming model. Another approach might be kinder to the environment and less risky for consumers, but, they assume, it would not be up to the task of providing all the food needed by our still-growing global population.

Contrary to such assumptions, there is ample evidence that an alternative approach—organic agriculture, or more broadly “agroecology”—is actually the only way to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, healthful food. Inefficiency and ecological destruction are built into the industrial model. But, beyond that, our ability to meet the world’s needs is only partially determined by what quantities are produced in fields, pastures, and waterways. Wider societal rules and norms ultimately shape whether any given quantity of food produced is actually used to meet humanity’s needs. In many ways, how we grow food determines who can eat and who cannot—no matter how much we produce. Solving our multiple food crises thus requires a systems approach in which citizens around the world remake our understanding and practice of democracy.

Today, the world produces—mostly from low-input, smallholder farms—more than enough food: 2,900 calories per person per day. Per capita food availability has continued to expand despite ongoing population growth. This ample supply of food, moreover, comprises only what is left over after about half of all grain is either fed to livestock or used for industrial purposes, such as agrofuels.¹

Despite this abundance, 800 million people worldwide suffer from long-term caloric deficiencies. One in four children under five is deemed stunted—a condition, often bringing lifelong health challenges, that results from poor nutrition and an inability to absorb nutrients. Two billion people are deficient in at least one nutrient essential for health, with iron deficiency alone implicated in one in five maternal deaths.²

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

November 24, 2017

A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

a close up of a rock in the middle of a grass covered field: Rachel Clement picks purple mustard before the first hard freeze of the season at Owl’s Nest Farm in Upper Marlboro, Md., on Nov. 9. Many women, highly educated and city-bred, are taking to the farm life. Clement has worked at the farm since August.

Rachel Clement picks purple mustard before the first hard freeze of the season at Owl’s Nest Farm in Upper Marlboro, Md., on Nov. 9. Many women, highly educated and city-bred, are taking to the farm life. Clement has worked at the farm since August.

Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.

The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md.

She joined a growing movement of highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmers who are capitalizing on booming consumer demand for local and sustainable foods and who, experts say, could have a broad impact on the food system.

For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture. Sixty-nine percent of the surveyed young farmers had college degrees — significantly higher than the general population.

This new generation can’t hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Future of Urban Farming

November 16, 2017

From left, Nataka Crayton-Walker, Greg Bodine, and Bobby Walker at a City Growers microfarm in Dorchester. | Photo by Leise Jones/City Growers

The Future of Urban Farming

Some sights in the neighborhood were so common that I had stopped noticing them; but then one day they came into view. While driving down Harold Street on the way to my cousin’s house, I noticed a vacant lot on my left and then, just a block down, I saw two large vacant lots on my right. At the end of Harold Street—right before Howland Street—stood a huge half-acre vacant lot. This area had been labeled the “H-block.” It was a tough neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, known for the significant number of shootings that occurred—which primarily were gang related. It also was a neighborhood with beautiful housing stock, long-term residents, and strong community leadership. Later that week, intrigued at the amount of vacant space, I walked the streets and tallied approximately 1.5 acres of land sitting vacant among the homes and apartment buildings.

Not long after that day, in the commissary kitchen of my company—City Fresh—the staff was preparing meals for one of the summer camps in session. The team members were cutting heads of lettuce that had been shipped in from across the country, and a question occurred to me: Why couldn’t we be growing this lettuce closer to home?

In answer to that question, I—along with a small group of community residents—founded City Growers. It was the spring of 2007. We set out to convert vacant lots—primarily located in the Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan neighborhoods—into intensive micro farms: to put our community idle hands to work and supply fresh, local, organic produce to the growing and insatiable market for local and sustainably grown food.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our food system – a health hazard

November 11, 2017

Our food system – a health hazard

People get sick because they work under unhealthy conditions.
People get sick because of contaminants in the water, soil, or air.
People get sick because specific foods they eat are unsafe for consumption.
People get sick because they have unhealthy diets.
People get sick because they can’t access adequate, acceptable food at all times.

A recent report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems identifies these five mechanisms whereby the current food system makes people sick.

The report calls for a reform of the food and farming systems to be made on the grounds of protecting human health. Many of the most severe health are caused by core industrial food and farming practices, such as chemical-intensive agriculture; intensive livestock production and the mass production and mass marketing of ultra-processed foods. They are in turn stimulated by the deregulated global trade.

Because of all interconnections in the complex food system it is not possible to always ascertain exactly the causes of a particular problem, but we know enough to act, according to the report. Even if the industrial food and farming model is not the only cause of the problems, it has clearly failed to provide solutions to them. The health effects are strongly linked to environmental effects and social issues.

It is all too convenient for the industrial food system to place the responsibility of dietary choices with the consumers, when in reality they are the choice architects and they constantly influence consumers to consume highly processed foods made from a limited range of industrial raw materials. In addition they influence both research and policy for their own benefits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Monsanto In Court Again As Powerful New Herbicide Accidently Kills 3.6 Million Acres Of Crops

November 9, 2017

Monsanto In Court Again As Powerful New Herbicide Accidently Kills 3.6 Million Acres Of Crops

Monsanto thought they had developed an amazing scheme to corner the Midwest farming market when they developed new genetically engineered seeds that were resistant to their new herbicide called dicamba. The resistance of Monsanto’s new magical seed crops to dicamba meant that the herbicide could be sprayed liberally by farmers to eradicate weeds and boost yields.

Alas, as we pointed out last week (see: Meet Monsanto’s Other Herbicide Problem…), a small problem emerged when spray drifts from those liberal herbicide applications began to wipe out the crops of neighboring farmers who didn’t plant Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant seeds.

Now, as the Wall Street Journal points out today, after allegedly wiping out millions of acres of farm ground across the Midwest, Monsanto once again finds itself in a familiar spot: the courtroom.

Monsanto’s new version of the herbicide called dicamba is part of a more than $1 billion investment that pairs it with new genetically engineered seeds that are resistant to the spray. But some farmers say their nonresistant crops suffered after neighbors’ dicamba drifted onto their land.

The agricultural giant in October sued the Arkansas State Plant Board following the board’s decision to bar Monsanto’s new herbicide and propose tougher restrictions on similar weed killers ahead of the 2018 growing season. Monsanto claims its herbicide is being held to an unfair standard.

Arkansas has been a flashpoint in the dispute: About 900,000 acres of crops were reported damaged there, more than in any other state.

About 300 farmers, crop scientists and other attendees gathered in Little Rock on Wednesday for a hearing on Arkansas’s proposed stiffer dicamba controls, which Monsanto and some farmers are fighting. The proposed restrictions are subject to the approval of a subcommittee of state legislators.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WHAT ANIMALS AND A BARN OFFER TO PERMACULTURE DESIGN

November 1, 2017

WHAT ANIMALS AND A BARN OFFER TO PERMACULTURE DESIGN

THE IMPORTANCE OF ANIMALS IN PERMACULTURE LANDSCAPES

Our agrarian past reminds us that farming without animals is like trying to drive a car without gasoline. While crop rotations, cover crops and periodically maintaining the land fallow were some strategies our grandparents used for keeping the farm productive, the dairy cow, the flock of chickens, and the few hogs were the guarantee of the continued fertility of the fields.

When done on a correct scale, raising animals on a small piece of land offers balance and sustained fertility while also offering quality food products. Animals eat from pastures and other waste products from the land while offering fertility and numerous food products for us humans. The function of animals in an industrialized concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) is simply to produce protein as fast as possible. On a small, permaculture landscape, however, animals (as an element of the overall system) offer several functions, including:

– Food/Protein
– Fertility
– Natural Cultivation/Tilling of the Soil
– Weed Control
– Diversification
– Companionship

Raising small animals around the world is often listed as a primary cause of deforestation, erosion, and a whole host of other ecological problems. When designed correctly, animals do contribute to overall system health.

A good parallel from the natural world is the bison herds that once roamed the Great Plains. The Native American population lived in harmony with the buffalo population which was estimated to be several million strong. The buffalo provided the native peoples as their primary food source and a source of clothing and shelter. Buffalo bones were even commonly used as kitchen and cooking utensils.

The buffalo, however, didn´t only contribute to the health and well-being of the local human population but also were the principal caretakers of the ecological balance of the prairie ecosystem over which they roamed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Empty Countryside

October 7, 2017

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE

I thought the sheep was dead. It was lying in the middle of a big grass field with its legs in the air. I wasn’t surprised; those fields are rented by a farmer who can’t afford to run his business in the way modern farming demands. He doesn’t own enough land to scale up his production by borrowing against its value. The result is not too many beasts on the farm,but too few: in this case six scraggy ewes roaming 15 acres. As I walked by, the dead one waved her legs. Alive then, but stuck on her back by her weight of wool. I trudged across to her, put my foot on her side and pushed her over away from me. She scrambled to her feet and ran off, fleece bouncing, bleating confusedly. If I hadn’t rescued her she probably would have died. No one would have noticed in time because no one passes this way.

For thousands of years, the English countryside has never been so empty of people and animals as it is now.

The part of West Dorset where I live was once a busy network of small farmsteads, most with fewer than 100 acres, keeping Red Devon cattle for meat and milk. Today, the old farm names on the Ordnance Survey map are a roll call of lost activity: Prime, Oselhay, Middlebrook, Taphouse, Lower Park, Purcombe, and Higher Sminhay. Their land has been sold and consolidated into bigger agricultural landholdings. Some of the farmhouses are second homes or holiday lets. Many more settlements have simply disappeared. The 1861 census lists Dodseye, Brickhouse, Poor House, Froghouse and Duckpool – all gone.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Complete Guide to Growing Potatoes

August 3, 2017

The Complete Guide to Growing Potatoes

Potatoes need slightly acidic soil, a lot of sunlight and a lot of water to thrive in your garden. The plants are annuals usually grown in zones 1 through 7. Along with growing potatoes in the ground, outdoors, many gardeners are able to successfully grow a crop of potatoes in a container or indoors.

Difficulty	Pretty easy
Type of Plant	Vegetable
Sunlight	Full sunlight
Soil Type & pH	Sandy soil, acidic pH
Hardiness Zones	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
You’ll Need	seeds, soil, trellises, pruners, pots.
Quick Tip: When planting potatoes, the eyes matter! Make sure you plant them with the eyes facing upward toward the surface.

The trick to growing indoors or in containers is supplying the potato plants with everything it needs, including well-drained acidic soil, moderate temperatures and ample light.

SOIL REQUIREMENTS

Since the part of the potato that you eat grows underground, the quality of the soil you plant potatoes in is particularly important. Potatoes are actually an acidic soil loving plant and will grow best in soil that has a pH of less than 5.5, according to Cornell University. The more acidic the soil, the better able the plants are to resist diseases such as scab.

Photo by Pexels licensed under CC0

Along with being slightly acidic, the soil you plant potatoes in should be well-drained and loose. If the soil is heavy or dense, it is difficult for the tubers (the part of the potato you eat) to grow. You’ll end up with small or oddly shaped potatoes.

Although potatoes prefer acidic soil, you can get away with growing them in more neutral conditions. A pH of up to 7.0 can be tolerated, but you’ll want to choose the variety of potato carefully. Since there’s a high risk for disease the less acidic the soil is, look for varieties that can resist scab and other potato problems.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Traceability in Farming Supply Chains

July 10, 2017

TRACEABILITY IN FARMING SUPPLY CHAINS

There are growing environmental challenges and people are increasingly aware of the environment. This awareness has extended to social issues faced around the world. Businesses within farming supply chains are concerned about these issues – they have to ensure that they are addressed within their operations to gain a competitive advantage.

Customers are asking critical questions about the social and environmental credentials of the food they eat. Customers want to know what farmers are doing within their own powers to improve the environment. They want to be rest assured that efforts are being made by supply chain players to combat climate change, reduce water scarcity and land pollution and so on.

In the context of social issues, customers want to understand the social conditions associated with the food they buy. They want to know if measures have been taken to ensure that no element of child labour was used to grow and produce their food crops, they want to be sure that farm workers were not exposed to health risks, and that workers are paid decently and so on.

In the same vein, environmentalists have come to terms with the fact that the environment has social dimensions attached to it. For example, people are part of the environment and it is expected that environmental protection measures being applied across all sectors of the economy should also put people into considerations – any measure that is deemed good for the environment should also be good for human lives and vice-versa before it can be implemented in any sector of the economy. As a result, efforts to improve environmental sustainability are also geared towards the creation of positive social impacts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Farming for a Small Planet: Agroecology Now

April 27, 2016

Farming for a Small Planet: Agroecology Now

The primary obstacle to sustainable food security is an economic model and thought system, embodied in industrial agriculture, that views life in disassociated parts, obscuring the destructive impact this approach has on humans, natural resources, and the environment. Industrial agriculture is characterized by waste, pollution, and inefficiency, and is a significant contributor to climate change. Within so-called free market economics, enterprise is driven by the central goal of bringing the highest return to existing wealth. This logic leads inexorably to the concentration of wealth and power, making hunger and ecosystem disruption inevitable. The industrial system does not and cannot meet our food needs. An alternative, relational approach—agroecology—is emerging and has already shown promising success on the ground. By dispersing power and building on farmers’ own knowledge, it offers a viable path to healthy, accessible food; environmental protection; and enhanced human dignity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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