Raw Milk Butter Making at Zaytuna Farm
Consumerism, Fermenting, Health & Disease, Processing & Food Preservation — by Salah Hammad July 30, 2012
Milking a cow in central Europe
Photo © Craig Mackintosh
(Other photos below: Salah Hammad)
Raw milk! Yes raw milk! For me, it was a first time! I grew up loving milk and milk products, but also grew up afraid of raw milk. We’ve always been taught that milk needs to be boiled. In University during my Food Technology courses we called it pasteurized and Ultra Heat Treated (UHT) milk.
Comments (3)The Australian National Food Plan – Have Your Say!
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, GMOs, General, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor July 24, 2012
 National Food Plan, Green Paper 3.75mb PDF |
The Australian federal government has issued a green paper on a National Food Plan for public consultation, which will include a series of public meetings in various places over the next several weeks, until September 30, 2012.
This is an excellent opportunity for permaculturists, localvores, agro-ecologists, etc., to get their message across and help ensure that it’s not just the big corporations who shape Australia’s food future (to their own disastrous ends).
Inset, at right, is the full Green Paper, and here is a summary. You’ll see that the focus is on dollars and exports, rather than sustainable peak-oil-generation resilience.
There are several ways you can give input on this topic. Find our more here, and register for a meeting near you here.
Please share this page, and encourage as many lucid souls as you can to get involved and breathe some sanity into Australia’s food future.
Comments (6)Coevolution
Biodiversity, Courses/Workshops, Health & Disease, Soil Biology — by Kay Baxter July 11, 2012
 Kay Baxter All photographs © Craig Mackintosh |
The more I learn about living simply, about permaculture design, about seeds and gardening, about food, nutrition, animals and about health and the regeneration of our soils and our own DNA, and about epigenetics, the more I realise our challenge is all about "stepping back into that circle of coevolution".
We are beginning to understand how the life in the soil communicates with, and helps to grow, strong and healthy plants and animals. We are beginning to understand how nutritionally dense food (plants and animals) communicates with human DNA to create healthy people. We are starting to get a glimpse of how healthy people can have the ability to complete the circle and communicate with their own environment in a way that benefits and strengthens the whole.
We are an expression of the sum total of all the energy transactions we are, and have been connected to. We are an expression of our very own environment!
Comments (2)Urban Design – Designing for Health
Health & Disease — by Kay Baxter May 28, 2012
Kay Baxter with seed from an old barley variety
Photo © Craig Mackintosh
As a life long gardener and permaculture garden designer, I have never seen a design for a food garden that actually takes into account the fats, minerals and vitamins human beings need for optimum health, according to science and history.
One of our research programs here at the Koanga Institute looks at relationships between human health, soil health, plant health, and animal health. We’ve concluded that if we wish to be eating food that nourishes our bodies and maintains our DNA for the long haul, we need to follow principles or ‘Laws of Nature’ around how energy becomes matter, how we grow and maintain health, and how our plants and animals grow and maintain their health.
Comments (8)Following McDonalds’ Example Towards a Healthy Diet
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Health & Disease, Land — by Campbell Wilson May 11, 2012
Images copyright Cam Wilson 2012
Who would have thought we could follow McDonalds’ business model to get our kids to eat healthy food?
Comments (3)The Story of Food
Biodiversity, Biofuels, Consumerism, GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Keveen Gabet March 22, 2012
In this short animated clip, USC Canada shares the sad realities behind the food industry. Another alarming call for the urgency to radically change the way we perceive food consumption.
Further reading/watching:
- Supermarket Secrets
- Chemical Based Farming Systems Robbing Us of Nutrients
- The Rise and Predictable Fall of Globalized Industrial Agriculture
- The Story of Soil
Peru Bans GMOs
Biodiversity, GMOs, Health & Disease, News, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 13, 2012
Back in 2009, Wikileaks released some diplomatic cables from the U.S. which revealed a list of priority countries for ‘GMO outreach’. Peru was amongst those on the hit list.
Well, now it seems Peru has opted out….
Comments (2)Peak Meat: U.S. Meat Consumption Falling
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Livestock — by Earth Policy Institute March 8, 2012
by Janet Larsen, Earth Policy Institute
U.S. meat consumption has peaked. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that meat eating across the country fell from the 2004 high point of 184 pounds (83 kilograms) per person to 171 pounds in 2011. Early estimates for 2012 project a further reduction in American meat eating to 166 pounds, making for a 10 percent drop over the eight-year period. For a society that lives high on the food chain, this new trend could signal the end of meat’s mealtime dominance.
Total U.S. meat consumption peaked in 2007 at 55 billion pounds and has fallen each year since. In 2012, consumption is expected to drop to 52 billion pounds, the lowest level in more than a decade.
Comments (3)Grow your own Drugs
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Medicinal Plants — by Sunny Soleil March 1, 2012
Pharmaceutical companies have been raiding nature’s larder for years and isolating ingredients to make high cost, patented, chemical drugs to cure our ails. My friend Florence who is 99 tells me that there is a plant for every ailment and James Wong agrees.
An ethno-botanist and gardener, James Wong explains, in the videos below, how many of the ingredients in commercially available drugs can be found in your garden or on a country walk. Cornflowers have been used for hundreds of years for eye ailments while almost every pain killer on the market contains something extracted from the common poppy. In these two videos he shows us how to prepare a marigold skin clearing acne gel, elderflower throat lozenges,eczema cream from wild violets. Wong also demonstrates preparation of Syrup of Figs for Constipation, Goji Berry Chicken Soup for Colds and Flu, Hops Pillow for Insomnia & Kiwi and Papaya Face Masks.
Part I
Farmer Faces Possible 3-year Prison Term for Feeding Community
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Markets & Outlets, Processing & Food Preservation, Society — by Liz Reitzig February 27, 2012
Press Release
February 24, 2012
Contact: Liz Reitzig, Co-founder, Farm Food Freedom Coalition
301-807-5063, lizreitzig (at) gmail.com www.RawMilkFreedomRiders.com
Farmer Faces Possible 3-year Prison Term for Feeding Community — Customers and Other Supporters Stand with Farmer
Baraboo, WI—Food sovereignty activists from around North America will meet at this tiny town on March 2 to support Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger and food sovereignty. Hershberger, who has a court hearing that day, is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could land him in prison for three years with fines of over $10,000. The Wisconsin Department of Agricultural Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) targeted Hershberger for supplying a private buying club with fresh milk and other farm products.
Comments (1)The Fight of the Century
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Richard Heinberg February 22, 2012
As economies contract, a global popular uprising confronts power elites over access to the essentials of human existence. What are the underlying dynamics of the conflict, and how is it likely to play out?
by Richard Heinberg (Article originally published on www.postcarbon.org)
1. Prologue
As the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features — corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries — while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably, is a global uprising. This current set of conditions and responses will lead, sooner or later, to social as well as economic upheaval — and a collapse of the support infrastructure on which billions depend for their very survival.
Nations could, in principle, forestall social collapse by providing the basics of existence (food, water, housing, medical care, family planning, education, employment for those able to work, and public safety) universally and in a way that could be sustained for some time, while paying for this by deliberately shrinking other features of society — starting with military and financial sectors — and by taxing the wealthy. The cost of covering the basics for everyone is within the means of most nations. Providing human necessities would not remove all fundamental problems now converging (climate change, resource depletion, and the need for fundamental economic reforms), but it would provide a platform of social stability and equity to give the world time to grapple with deeper, existential challenges.
Comments (1)Natural Hair Care and Small Steps Towards Sustainability
Consumerism, Health & Disease, Medicinal Plants — by Niva Kay
In this article I would like to share with you the transition Yotam and I went through from conventional hair care to a completely zero waste, home made, natural hair care regime.
I think this process is also a mirror to many other parallel transitions we have been doing in our lives on our way to sustainability, and that our society still needs to go through.
Any step you take on this path is blessed, but knowing that there is more that you can do can help in taking yourself further.
Here are the steps we’ve gone through:
Comments (7)Roundup in City-Dwellers’ Urine
Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Jeffrey M. Smith February 21, 2012
Studies have already found Monsanto’s toxic herbicide Roundup in groundwater, in streams, and even in the rain and air of US agricultural areas. It’s been found in our blood and even crosses the placental barrier to enter our unborn fetuses. So are we surprised that a German university study has now found significant concentrations of Roundup’s main ingredient glyphosate in the urine of city dwellers?
Perhaps we should be surprised at the amount: all the samples had concentrations of glyphosate at 5 to 20 times the limit for drinking water.
Comments (3)USAID to Incorporate Permaculture in Aid Work
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Food Shortages, Health & Disease, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor February 17, 2012
 USAID Permaculture Technical Brief (580kb PDF) |
The growing food crisis has struggled to stay in the headlines since being highlighted broadscale in the mainstream media back in 2008, but it moves apace regardless, and I can assure you it will continue to do so, likely at a frightening rate. A 2012 Save the Children report shares that "Half a billion children could grow up physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years because they do not have enough to eat" (BBC).
With this in mind, it’s excellent news that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID — "the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid" Wikipedia) is moving to incorporate permaculture design into its aid work for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). They’ve just released a technical brief (right) to help expedite this.
From the document:
Comments (10)2nd National Sustainable Food Summit, Sydney, Australia (April 2012)
Conferences, Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Deforestation, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Cheryl Samarasinghe February 14, 2012
Editor’s Note: I would encourage all well-spoken permaculturists who can make it to Sydney for this event to go along and contribute your thoughts — to help show how permaculture can shift our planetary orbit onto a safer trajectory….
What: 2nd National Sustainable Food Summit
When: 2-4 April, 2012
Where: Dockside, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Last year, in April 2011, over 340 delegates including public health, primary producers and members of the business, government, education, community and not-for-profit sectors came together in Melbourne to share ideas that could inform a vision for Australia’s food system in 2030.
The Inaugural National Sustainable Food Summit generated extraordinary consensus for the need to collaborate and continue the conversations necessary to transform Australia’s food system.
The 2nd National Sustainable Food Summit has been designed to progress the discussion from 2011 — which focused on the limits and challenges to our current system — to begin to examine what new frameworks and emerging solutions will help support a sustainable and resilient food system for Australia now and in the future.
Comments (1)
