Approaching The Collapse: Don't Panic, Go Organic, By Ronnie Cummins

Approaching The Collapse: Don't Panic, Go Organic, By Ronnie Cummins

Extreme weather, crop failures, commodities speculation, land grabs, escalating prices, soil degradation, depleted aquifers, routine contamination, food-related disease, and mass hunger represent the “new norm” for food and farming. The global agricultural system, with the exception of the rapidly growing organic sector, rests upon a shaky foundation. Patented seeds, genetically engineered crops, expensive and destructive chemical and energy-intensive inputs, factory farms, monoculture production, eroding soils, unsustainable water use, taxpayer subsidies, and long-distance hauling and distribution, including massive imports that amount to 15% of the U.S. food supply amount to a recipe for disaster.

Boulder Prepares For Hard Times Ahead With “Food Localization,” By Bob Wells

Boulder Prepares For Hard Times Ahead With “Food Localization,” By Bob Wells

Like so many chirping miner’s canaries, about 400 people met last weekend in a Boulder church and hotel to talk about what might perhaps best be called “collapse preparedness.” The occasion was a conference called “Our Local Economy in Transition: Exploring Food Localization as Economic Development,” organized by Transition Colorado, the local arm of the “Transition Towns” movement.

Beyond Affluenza And Into The “New Normal”: Carolyn Baker Interviews David Wann

Beyond Affluenza And Into The “New Normal”: Carolyn Baker Interviews David Wann

We are a nation on the edge of a nervous breakdown. We consume two-thirds of the world’s anti-depressants as we battle for position in the economy. Why not just declare a cease-fire with the Joneses we’ve been trying to keep up with? We’ve bought into the notion that if we’re not wealthy, we’re not good enough, which creates horrible stress and anxiety. Why not become citizens again, creating employee-owned businesses and member-owned credit unions that can reduce both killer stress and unnecessary expenses? (Credit unions save $8 billion a year in interest on loans because they are non-profit) Why not invest in community bonds, portfolios and banks and make living returns on our investments?

An Interview With Michael Shuman: If We’re Serious About Localisation, All of Us Have To Go To Business School

An Interview With Michael Shuman: If We’re Serious About Localisation, All of Us Have To Go To Business School

I think localisation really is two pieces – one is ownership and the other is proximity. The particular spread of local food ideas has given a lot of weight to the proximity issue – that is, that the distance between farm to table should be a short one – but I think it’s given short thrift to the ownership issues, and I consider it just as essential that localisation involve local ownership of every node of a shortened journey that a good or service travels to get to the end user.

Slow Money: Reconnecting The Economy to Soil, Biodiversity, and Food Quality, By Woody Tasch

Slow Money: Reconnecting The Economy to Soil, Biodiversity, and Food Quality, By Woody Tasch

As long as money accelerates around the planet, divorced from where we live, our befuddlement will continue. As long as the way we invest is divorced from how we live and how we consume, our befuddlement will worsen. As long as the way we invest uproots companies, putting them in the hands of a broad, shallow pool of absentee shareholders whose primary goal is the endless growth of their financial capital, our befuddlement at the depletion of our social and natural capital will only deepen.