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They offer valuable resources and practical solutions for organic and transitioning producers, as well as conventional producers interested in ecologically and economically sound practices. Positive signs are on the horizon.
In addition to organic practices including composting and perennial cover crops, he added a silvopasture for his grass-fed cattle. Elderberry, becoming popular as a hedgerow crop, provides both farm income and ecological benefits. Crombie is optimistic that agroforestry will go a long way in restoring land but also rural communities.
In this sense, California Plowshares is a return to the kind of rural sharing economies that once arose naturally between farmers in tight-knit communities but have become much less common in recent years. To get [your mulch or compost] spread in a timely manner was really quite impossible,” said Gonzales-Siemens.
The research from the University of Michigan-led study seems to show that fruit and vegetables grown in urban ag have a carbon footprint six times larger than that of “conventionally grown” food (meaning, on rural farmland). I see that shift happening already on farms both urban and rural, big and small.
Many have zero rural experience, connections, or history. We need more people in rural America to make a critical mass that will keep the livestock, equipment, and feed suppliers in business. This new generation of homesteaders is a shot in the arm for rural communities. These newcomers need a why.
Where are we in the ecological succession? Trees exist in a different ecological succession stage than pioneering stage plants, also known as weeds. Ecological succession is the process by which plant communities change over time, eventually yielding a climax community. I did my graduate work in cotton.
What I do is visit farms and look for cutting edge practical ecological solutions. With its abundant sunshine, I assumed lots of rural folks would be investing in solar panels to make up for the rolling blackouts. Couple that with anti-ecology and you have a recipe for dysfunction. Like chemical fertilizer instead of compost.
But it’s generated some pretty negative outcomes, including widespread degradation of land, water, and ecosystems, leaving rural communities gutted and left to the tumbleweeds. Until then, it seems to me a comprehensive, ecological approach is what’s needed. Diversity of food crops and flowering annuals. Legume and grass covers.
In addition, it included increased funds for the Rural Energy for America Program. The resilience centers would focus on specific areas of ecological improvement ranging from minimizing or abating adverse climate and environmental impacts to reducing dependency on fossil fuels.
Together, last spring we visited both rural and urban farms like Kern Family Farm in the Sierra Foothills, and Red H Farm and Singing Frogs Farm in the North Bay.
NSAC welcomed the pragmatic Senate bill, the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act of 2024 (RPFSA) , as an important step toward completing a bipartisan farm bill reauthorization this year. However, NSAC is disheartened to see no reference to establishing composting as a national practice standard in the RPFSA.
Goldthwaite The coeditors of Good Eats , both English professors and authors, have gathered a selection of creative nonfiction essays that requires “ecological thinking and a close attention to relationships, the environment, and diversity.” The book exceeded my expectations.
Asian Farmers Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) , Asia AFA empowers small-scale farmers, fishers, Indigenous peoples, and rural communities across Asia through advocacy, capacity building, and knowledge sharing. There is no life limit on healthy soil, says farmer Gerardo Martinez, CEO of GALA.
Photo credit: Jess Giacobbe) A nybody who is interested—urban, suburban or rural gardeners and farmers or any land stewards—can participate in Carbon Sponge. She’s an award-winning professor of New Media at SUNY Purchase where she teaches Dark Ecology, a class closely aligned with her work in the ecological art space.
I see myriad varieties of vegetable crops one after the other in planned succession–seedlings and vegetative and fruiting–and I can smell the musty earthiness of the compost pile in the center of the field plots. Voices of farm workers, young people in shorts and muck boots and wide brimmed straw hats drift across the fields. What’s missing?
In comparison to the enormous opportunity that sustainable and organic agriculture represents for farmers and rural communities, federal investment in related research, education, and extension has been minuscule. This approach is misguided and will not meaningfully address the climate crisis.
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