This new section will cover p2p-oriented and relocalization trends in agriculture and food production.

We are in the process of porting the related articles from our Ecology section. First column done so far.

For a closer watch of these developments, see our delicious tags:

1. P2P-Agriculture
2. P2P-Food

Introduction

• Grain proposes: Five key steps towards a food system that can address climate change and the food crisis

• Essential Food Policy Proposals. By MARK BITTMAN

Key Citations

…everything old is new again. The resurgent interest in local foods and home-scale preservation—from canning, jamming, freezing, brewing, fermenting, and otherwise experimenting with food—is happening coast to coast. Taking up the pot and the pan, the cheesecloth and strainer, the canning jar and the wine bottle, homesteaders are beginning to reweave the web of culture lost in the toxic downdrift of the industrial food supply. Food preservation is hooked into all the values of homesteading—self-sufficiency, community resilience, DIY for fun and pleasure—a reminder that food is not something that’s done for us, but something that we do with one another. Remaking our relationship to food is one of the central homesteading pleasures and practices, a radical act that can go a long way toward growing into our role as producers rather than consumers.

— From “Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living” by Rachel Kaplan with K. Ruby Blume, Skyhorse Publishing, New York: 2011 [1]

The Insufficient Politics of the Slow Food and Locavore Movements

The Slow Food and locavore movements have been rightly criticized for their class politics, for advancing a laudable goal that is unattainable by many who might choose it if they could, and for consumption excesses that they justify as being local and “slow.” Their essential message, however, that food is an intimate reflection of our lives and culture, is not a class-based assertion but a human one. The appropriate class critique lies in the fact that not everyone can afford a Slow Food meal or the labyrinthine lifestyle of the locavore, but the drive towards localizing our food sources and reimagining our relationship with food can be shared with everyone. Generating local food sources in order to provide food security for everyone is part of the bigger story of the urban food revival currently underway.

— From “Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living” by Rachel Kaplan with K. Ruby Blume, Skyhorse Publishing, New York: 2011 [2]

Key Facts

According to the 30-year ongoing comparative Farming Systems Trial at the Rodale Institute [3]:

• Organic yields match conventional yields.

• Organic outperforms conventional in years of drought.

• Organic farming systems build rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.

• Organic farming uses 45% less energy and is more efficient.

• Conventional systems produce 40% more greenhouse gases.

• Organic farming systems are more profitable than conventional.

Resources

1. Food financing in the U.S. Northwest

Key Articles and Essays

1. Robert Paterson on the Emergence of Four Major Techno-Economic Paradigms: on the key role of food surplus as lever in the evolution of human civilisation [4]
2. Jan Douwe van de Ploeg: Reconstitution of the Peasantry in the 21st Century
3. Report: Agroecology and the Right to Food : A move by farmers in developing countries to ecological agriculture, away from chemical fertilisers and pesticides, could double food production within a decade [5]
4. Barriers to Agri-ecological conversion: overview of the problems regarding this necessary switch
5. Report: Sustainable Agriculture and Off-Grid Renewable Energy. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho. ISIS contribution to UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2011 [6]
6. Jason F. Mclennan. The Urban Agriculture Revolution. Bringing Food into Living Cities. [7]: An important and sensible overview of why this is happening.

Policy proposals:

• Six Proposed Policy Principles for Scaling Up Agroecology. By Olivier De Schutter, Gaëtan Vanloqueren:

How-to:

1. Five innovations for urban gardening
2. Ensuring Land Access, by Rob Hopskins.
3. How To Share Land; focuses on UK/US

Key Blogs

1. Permatechie: a blog about the intersection of ecovillages and hackspaces, ecology and technology, primitivism and transhumanism, permaculture and appropriate technology.

Key Books

1. The Ecological Revolution – Making Peace with the Planet. John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2009, 288 pp [8]
2. Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel, Pambazuka Press, Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford, 2009 [9]; Follow-up: Food Movements Unite! Ed. by Eric Holt-Giménez and Annie Shattuck. Food First, 2011. [10]
3. Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities. Carlo Petrini. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010. [11]
4. Reclaiming Public Water. Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World. By Brid Brennan, et al. download: The groundbreaking book on how reformed public water services can achieve the goal of delivering water for all.
5. Radical Gardening. George McKay. France Lincoln, 2010
6. Robert Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity, New York: Pluto, 2009. The world food crisis involves global patterns of malnutrition -- 25% of the world is obese or overweight; 25% is starving.

Policy guide:

• The Future Control of Food. A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security. Edited By Geoff Tansey and Tasmin Rajotte. IDRC, 2010 [12] : “This book is the first wide-ranging guide to the key issues of intellectual property and ownership, genetics, biodiversity and food security."

Key Movements

1. Campesino a Campesino
2. Slow Food
3. Terra Madre Network

Preferred projects:

• The Nutrient Dense Project [13]: voluntary network of farmers, gardeners, orchardists, ranchers, agronomists, writers and researchers is working hard to re-write the rules for the way in which we understand food, the production thereof, and its consumption, all based on sound scientifically credible data that they gather and pay for themselves. The idea is being able to conclusively demonstrate (read: numbers) that soil health = plant health = nutrition."

Key Policy Documents

1. Measures for Relocalization and Reruralization, 2 times four essential policy principles, as proposed by Mariarosa Dalla Costa
2. Report: “Our Water Commons, Towards a New Freshwater Narrative” by Maude Barlow [14]
3. Report: Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life. ETC Group, 2008. [15]. Implications of commodifying Synthetic Biology
4. Policy propositions for sustaining food & farming systems, for Victoria, Australia
5. Grain: Five key steps towards a food system that can address climate change and the food crisis

Key Webcasts

• Dirt!: excellent documentary