Agriculture Archives - Page 2 of 5

Consideration for all life—even Carrots!

April 11, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Homegrown carrots

I posted an article on social media about a scientists who believe that mushrooms “talk” to each other. Fascinating stuff. In response, someone made this comment to my post:

“my son and I were talking about this today… so now that plants, trees, fungi, animals, and so forth all talk to one another, what do we eat? The carrots are screaming when we pull them, the shrooms lose a huge part of their network. Cows love music. I’m really confused now.”

In response, I wrote:

I’ve been giving those subjects a lot of thought, more than I can put down in an FB comment. (I’m actually working on a book on these topics.) But, briefly, I would mention a few things:

First, there’s the fact that many vegetables and nearly all fruit can be harvested without harming the plant. In fact, many berry seeds, for example, germinate better once they’ve fermented in a digestive tract. Some plants respond positively to having their leaves picked. Any of the mints, for example, come back doubled after your pinch back their tips, which makes twice as many flowers, and hence seeds, on that stem. Such pinching back can be done multiple times per season. So there’s that—the plants that want us to eat from them.

Can Our Veggie Gardens Feed us in a Real Crisis?

March 27, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

A haul from the Author’s urban farming operation in Portland, Sept. 15, 2007 *(Photo C.H.White)*

I originally posted this essay in July, 2019, in response to massive flooding in the US Midwest that had the potential to affect food supplies. I am reposting it now because food shortages could result from the war in the Ukraine. As in 2019, I am seeing suggestions on social media to “plant a garden.”

If only it were that simple.

I used to be a small-scale organic farmer so take it from me: totally feeding yourself from your own efforts is very, very challenging. Though some friends and I tried over multiple seasons, we never succeeded, or even came anywhere close.

Beyond the War on Invasive Species: Interview with Tao Orion

February 17, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Tao Orion, author of “Beyond the War on Invasive Species”

Tao Orion is the author of “Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration.” She is a permaculture designer, teacher, homesteader, and mother living in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. I interviewed her on May 18, 2020, for my podcast, “Voices for Nature & Peace.” What follows is a partial transcript of that conversation, edited for clarity. [Listen to the entire interview here]

K: A lot of people have heard the term, “invasive species” and most of them of course are assuming it’s something bad, but when it comes right down to it, it’s actually very difficult to define the term and we could even say that there isn’t one definition of that term.

T: Yes, that’s something that I found really interesting as I was researching my book, because I was really trying to find out if there was a clear, objective description of what an invasive species is, and I found that even the National Invasive Species Council—which in the US is the federal government level board that looks at invasive species issues—spent years on deliberating on the definition and even so, they weren’t able to come up with something that I felt was purely an objective description that could be [applied] in all contexts. It seemed to vary from place to place and time to time.

K: Monsanto was one of the companies involved in setting [that council] up.

T: That’s another disturbing element about how the big frenzy around invasive species and the purported damage that they do came to be so popular; a lot of that was informed and funded by pesticide interests to spur the sale of products, herbicides in particular, to deal with species invasions.

K: I think that most people are probably not aware of the fact that the use of pesticides and herbicides has been rising over the last 20 years, not falling. I think people hear about organic agriculture and they think we must be on the right path. But due in part to the war on invasives and also due to genetically modifying crops to be Round-up Ready so they can survive the use of pesticides—these two things seem to have driven an increase in the use of pesticides over the last 20 years.

T: Yes, it’s definitely alarming. My background is in organic agriculture. I was immersed in that world. Even before writing this book, I was under the impression that herbicides were somewhat less toxic in the realm of pesticide toxicity [as opposed to insecticides or fungicides, for example]. In researching herbicides more for invasive species management and agriculture in general, I learned a lot more about their toxicity and insidious toxicity to insects and mammals and other lifeforms that I don’t think gets talked about enough. People assume they’re more ecologically benign, but really they’re not, and that’s important to bring to the table.

Rethinking Food & Agriculture: New Ways Forward (book review)

March 24, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

This review is based in part on my interview with one of the editors, Laila Kassam, which you can listen to here.

Agriculture is at the root of multiple crises facing humanity today. Environmentally, it is responsible for habitat destruction, topsoil loss, aquifer depletion, pesticide and fertilizer pollution, ocean dead zones, dubious genetic experimentation, and a tremendous amount of green house gas emissions. Socially, its practice depends on a permanent underclass of slave-like labor controlled by monopolistic corporate forces with pernicious political influence. Philosophically, it reduces non-human life—plants, animals, fungus, etc.—to objects to be controlled and manipulated rather than relations with whom to live in reciprocity; this “dominionism” (as enshrined by the Abrahamic religious tradition) is the toxic foundation of contemporary capitalism (and which, I must add, is too often ignored by socialist theory).

We have to eat, of course, so what are we to do?

“Rethinking Food & Agriculture: New Ways Forward,” an anthology edited by Amir Kassam and Laila Kassam, takes a deep dive into these ecological and cultural concerns, from the Neolithic Revolution to the present day, and explores sustainable solutions.

Appearance on the Green Root podcast!

February 8, 2021 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“On episode #42 of the Green Root Podcast, host and ex-farmhand, Josh Schlossberg, gets his hands dirty with writer, podcaster, and organic farmer, Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, to unearth the roots of the agricultural revolution, the ecological and societal impacts of industrial ag, and how humanity might find a balance between growing food and preserving nature.”

>> LISTEN <<

An End to Stability

December 23, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

"Castle Ruin" by Harold Broadfield Warren, 1896. — “Castle Ruin” by Harold Broadfield Warren, 1896.

2020, with its pandemic and its protests, was many things to many people: a hardship for those who lost homes, livelihoods and people they loved to COVID and insufficient government support; an inspiration for activists who have been working for years to call attention to police brutality; and an imposition to those who resent anything that makes them take other people into account (like demands for racial justice or requests to follow public health protocol).

What 2020 should have been for everyone was a wake-up call that the system is not as solid as it might have seemed, and further, that that isn’t all bad.

Box of Raisins Product of a System with No Future

May 9, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The box stood out right away.

Lots of boxes and packages and envelopes—of different sizes, shapes, and colors—arrive at this residence on a regular basis. The closest town with stores & services is over thirty miles away, and the selection—while not abysmal, and for many things adequate—leaves some things to be desired. Plus, even for goods that can be procured there, the extra costs of gas money and driving time are added to the sticker price. So, long story short, we mail order a lot of things here, and are on a first name basis with the UPS driver.

But even so, this particular box caught my eye: It featured bright orange colors and was labeled “Industria Argentina * Argentina Produce.” I was quite happy to find that it was addressed to me!

It had arrived the day before, so I felt comfortable handling it (for future readers, this was during the 2020 pandemic, when we would let packages sit overnight before touching them), and I went to pick it up. I was immediately surprised by its heavy weight for its size. I set it back down and inspected it more closely. The contents were revealed in English in only two places, in rather small lettering, and the first one I found was a label that had clearly been affixed later, I assume in the United States: “Seedless Organic Select Thompson Raisins.” Ooh! Now I was really psyched!

Slaughter of the Innocents: COVID-19 & the Future of Agriculture

May 5, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

**Above:** *Massive cattle operation in Imperial County, California [Photo by the author]*

listen to the author read this post:

or watch on YouTube

It’s early days yet, but the COVID-19 pandemic has already proven to be revelatory, exposing much that is ugly about the “normal” functioning of the US: the sorry state of health care, the unresponsiveness of corporate-owned government, the hyper individuality of the populace, the high levels of ignorance among the same, and the racism of the entire system.

Regarding that lattermost point: This nation was founded by white Europeans who stole the land from the Indigenous and then built wealth with African slaves, and guess who’s doing the worst in this pandemic? The Native Americans and the Blacks. And look who’s protesting the loudest to get things “back to normal”: Whites, many of them with Confederate flags. Let that sink in.

Agriculture was at the heart of the settler colonialism: The land was seized for farming and the people were kidnapped to work the fields. From brutal beginnings, the situation has only worsened, especially in the last few decades. Small-scale, family-farming à la Old MacDonald is the stuff of myth at this point, with precious few exceptions. Pesticide use is up, ground-water levels are down, top soil is blowing away, wildlife biodiversity is shrinking, and human workers are abused.

Corporate ownership of the means of food production has led to concentrated ownership, de-localization, and supply chains that are brittle in response to stress. A handful of corporate giants (in fact, only four) have gobbled up most of the US meat industry.

These corporations have set up “economies of scale” that utilize mass mechanization and impose horrific living conditions never before seen—and not seen enough, thanks in part to “Ag Gag” laws that forbid photographic or video documentation of what goes on in such places. One could be forgiven for assuming these companies don’t want their customers to know the details of how their meat is processed. Especially when the results are thing like fecal matter in 100% of the ground beef (as found in a food-safety test conducted by Consumer Reports in 2015). Jim Hightower went so far as to say that factory farms aren’t farms, but “concentration camps for animals.”

Featured as guest on Ground Shots Podcast

April 2, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

I’m super pleased that I got to be a guest on Kelly Moody’s “Ground Shots” Podcast!

FIND IT HERE

From Kelly’s show notes, we talked about:

the pros and cons of permaculture
wild-tending as not just using knowledge from the past but adapting to a changing world
some connections between patriarchy, organized religion and slavery
the blurry line between gatherer-hunter life-ways and small scale agriculture
horticulture vs. agriculture
some history of agriculture, the negative impacts of agriculture on health and culture
Kollibri’s various books and zines on farming, wild-tending, ‘invasive’ plants, and place-based travel
questioning victorian ideas of gatherer-hunter culture and the transition to agriculture
the importance of an interdisciplinary approach and looking at things from many angles, avoiding ‘silo’ing when possible
the importance of practicing small scale agriculture with the fragmented ecology and culture we have right now
the racist origins of wilderness, national parks and public lands, and the continued racism in these institutions or ideas
what to expect from Kollibri’s new podcast ‘Voices For Nature and Peace’

Seed Companies I Recommend

March 25, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

It’s getting late in the season to order seeds, but since there’s renewed interest in gardening this year due to the Coronavirus, I thought I’d share my recommendations for seed companies. I’m sure there are great ones I don’t know about; these are just ones that I’m familiar with from my own organic farming and gardening. Not everything that all these companies offer is open-pollinated or organic, but there’s a place for hybrids, and “organic” can start with you.

Navigation