(excerpts from sources linked)
Achieving Food Independence on the Modern Homestead
http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/achieving-food-independence-industrial-homestead.html
I wrote this article as a handout for my presentation of the same title at the annual conference of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, State College, PA, February 4, 2006. It was subsequently published in three installments in Countryside & Small Stock Journal (Sep/Oct 06, Nov/Dec 06, and Jan/Feb 07 issues).
Table of Contents
1: Industrial Food and the Homestead Alternatives2: Soil Fertility3: Organic Matter4: Minimizing Tillage5: Garden Year--Spring6: Garden Year--Summer7: Garden Year--Fall8: Garden Year--Winter9: Orchard and Woodlot10: Forest Garden11: The Lawn12: Livestock13: Poultry14: Ruminants15: Closing Thoughts on Livestock16: Local Foods17: Bringing It All Together
Current food production system due for collapse
ISIS Report 06/04/05
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldInitiativeF.php
World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years. The situation has not improved despite a 'bumper' harvest in 2004, which was just enough to satisfy world consumption. In too many food production regions of the world, conventional farming practices have severely depleted the underground water to the point where rivers and lakes have dried out, topsoil has been eroded away, and wild life decimated. At the same time, world oil production may have passed its peak; oil price hit a record high of US$58 a barrel on 4 April 2005, and is expected to top US$100 within two years. This spells looming disaster for conventional industrial agriculture, which is heavily dependent on both oil and water. The true costs of our current food production system are becoming all too clear (see Box 1). Getting our food production sustainable is the most urgent task for humanity; it is also the key to delivering health, ameliorating the worst effects of climate change and saving the planet from destructive exploitation. The benefits of sustainable food production systems are also becoming evident (see Box 2). The Independent Science Panel (ISP) and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) are launching this Sustainable World initiative to engage with all sectors of civil society to make our food production system truly sustainable.
John Ikerd, Agriculture After Fossil Energy
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/Iowa-FmUnion-Energy.htm
The world is running out of cheap fossil energy. Some dismiss the current energy crunch as nothing more than a short run phenomenon, arguing that we have used but a small fraction of the earth’s total fossil energy reserves. While there is truth to this argument, it masks far more than it reveals. The industrial era of the past 200-years has been fueled by cheap energy, first by wood from abundant forests and then by fossil energy from easily accessible sources. But the days of old-growth forests, oil gushers, surface veins of coal are gone. Most of the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas are buried far below the earth’s surface or deep beneath ocean floors. The remaining reserves of coal likewise are more costly to mine and to burn without degrading the environment. There are no more sources of cheap fossil energy. Industrialization, which has dominated modern society for the past two centuries, is coming to an end.
...The highest priority for American agriculture should be on reducing the fossil energy dependence of food production. Our current food system, including food processing and distribution, claims about 17% of total U.S. fossil energy use, with about one-third of this total used at the farm level.[9] In fact, we use about ten kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced, not counting the energy use in final food preparation. This means that even at the farm level, American agriculture uses about three kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced. In a world of rising population and dwindling fossil energy, the first priority of agriculture should be producing more food with less fossil energy.
By Ronnie Cummins Organic Consumers Association, October 14, 2008
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15140.cfm
OCA is happy to announce a new grassroots-powered campaign called Organic Transitions, inspired in part by the UK's fast-growing Transition Towns movement. Organic Transitions is designed to mobilize organic consumers and local communities to start planning and implementing “transition” strategies so as to survive and thrive in the turbulent times ahead, with organic food and farming providing the healthy cornerstone for a new, more localized and sustainable green economy.
First the bad, or shall we say the really bad, news. Not since the Great Depression have Americans been challenged by anything comparable to the current unfolding disaster: economic meltdown, global warming, climate chaos, escalating energy and resource costs, looming shortages, endless war, biodiversity erosion, and deteriorating public health—metastasized and abetted by a corporate elite and indentured federal government that apparently doesn’t know what to do, or, worse, doesn’t care. Even with likely regime change on November 4, we are in very deep trouble, according to leading scientists, economists, agronomists, and public health experts.
Fortunately a critical mass of people are waking up to the fact that we must get organized and find holistic solutions, not mere band-aids, for our crisis. Millions of us are heartened by the indisputable fact that organic, green, commonsense solutions for all of our life-or-death problems are at hand, including appropriate technology and innovative public policy and legislation. We don’t have to wait for Washington bureaucrats or corporate marketers to tell us what to do. We can join together with our fellow citizens and begin the absolutely essential process of organizing Organic Transitions committees and campaigns in our local areas, starting with local organic food buying clubs, house parties, and study and action circles.
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