Since the mid-1980s, Mexico has been a poster child for globalization. Through free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions, the country has been “liberalized” – opened up to unfettered corporate investment and imports – to an extent matched by few other countries. Though the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the most well-known trade treaty to affect Mexico, it is but the first and largest of numerous multilateral and … [Read more...]
Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment
If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have given us agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, regenerative agriculture and other methods that can alleviate or perhaps even eliminate the global food system’s worst impacts: biodiversity loss, energy depletion, … [Read more...]
Mending a History of Discrimination through “Person-to-Person Reparations”
Although systemic economic forces make it difficult for anyone to survive as a farmer — and even harder to acquire enough land to start a farm — institutional racism and other forms of discrimination have made it all but impossible for people of color. That’s why Soul Fire Farm, a people of color led community farm near Albany, New York , has launched a project meant to deal with the lasting effects of discrimination in a way that both empowers POC farmers to grow the food their communities … [Read more...]
Localization: a strategic alternative to globalized authoritarianism
For those who care about peace, equality and the future of the planet, the global political swing to the right over the past few years is deeply worrying. It has us asking ourselves, how did this happen? How did populism turn into such a divisive and destructive force? How did authoritarianism take over the political scene once again?From my 40 years of experience working in both industrialized and land-based cultures, I believe the primary reason is globalization. When I say globalization, … [Read more...]
Cooking fresh for the planet
How often do you cook a meal from scratch? For 11% of British people, the answer is never. But subsisting entirely on processed food and ready meals is not only bad for your health, it is also bad for the planet. It makes little sense financially, either: it is cheaper to create a meal using whole foods and fresh ingredients than it is to buy a substandard supermarket version. Eating well shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for the well-off, everyone can do it: it is part of the Economics of … [Read more...]
CTRLshift: An Emergency Summit for Change
In Britain, these days, all the essential endeavors that are supposed to promote general wellbeing and what is known as “civilization” are, it is widely agreed, in crisis: health and social services; housing; education; energy; transport; and of course, though successive governments haven’t taken it seriously, agriculture. Oh yes, and then there’s “the environment” – nothing less than the biosphere; nature; the living world — but commonly thought of these days as real estate or “natural capital” … [Read more...]
Agriculture and Autonomy in the Middle East
Editor’s Note (March 29th, 2018): An earlier version of this article incorrectly described MEM as operating in Rojava. In fact, MEM only operates formally in North (Turkish) Kurdistan, though its goals and principles are also being pursued by groups in Rojava, including the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.In the predominantly Kurdish regions of Syria and Turkey, known respectively as Rojava and North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
What Does “Organic” Mean?
The organic food movement suffered a major setback recently, when the US National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) voted in favor of allowing hydroponically-grown products to receive the “organic” label. This decision should not have come as a surprise to those who have watched the organic movement steadily taken over by big agribusiness – a process that began in 1990 when Congress required the USDA to create a single set of national standards that would define the meaning of … [Read more...]
Life in a ‘degrowth’ economy, and why you might actually enjoy it
What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy can’t grow for ever.But what is a steady-state economy? Why it is it desirable or necessary? And what would it be like to live in? The global predicament We used to live on a planet that was relatively empty of humans; today it is full to overflowing, with more people consuming more … [Read more...]