Food

In this article for HopeDance Magazine, Post Carbon Institute founder Julian Darley
discusses the connections between food and energy, both globally and as locally as your kitchen table.

The Reality Report interviews Sharon Astyk— writer, teacher and subsistence farmer, and the author of two forthcoming books on Peak Oil and Climate Change — Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front (Fall ‘08) and A Nation of Farmers (And Cooks) (Spring ‘09), the latter co-authored with Aaron Newton. On this show, we discuss low energy methods for home food preservation and storage.

Localization of our food supply is one of the most critical ways we will improve the condition of our planet. There are many things we can be doing in the way of environmental sustainability. But none of them play as central a role in everyone's life as food. In this episode, we launch Crop To Cuisine onto the airwaves discussing the reasons that localization of our food supply is so important, including the historical context, environmental impacts, and even economic benefits. Our guests include Amy Trubek, PhD, Dawn Thilmany, PhD, and Jon Ash, Chef and Author.

In this episode of Deconstructing Dinner, we explore the creation of a market for local grain using a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. We also hear from a grade 4 student sharing some shocking information with his classmates on factory animal farms.

This episode highlights the dialogue that a regional food security conference can help inspire, and emphasizes the wealth of knowledge and talent that may be hidden in the recesses of North American communities. Host Jon Steinman also visits with a Conscientious Cook in Saskatoon, Canada - Daniel Walker.

In this freewheeling conversation, Jason Bradford and Brian Weller, co-founders of Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL), discuss local food security, creating a farm at a nearby grade school, being rooted in community, urban / rural friction in wealth and land use, regional trading partners, reinventing local public transportation, and more. Episode 95.

Recorded at a regional food security conference in Nelson, BC, we hear from two keynote speakers and two elected officials on the current energy supply and demand balance, the imminent need to redefine local governance, mass migration, and a suggestion from one politician "to begin looking to political representation as a means to help politics stay out of the way of the interests of people!

In Nelson, British Columbia, 150 residents pledged to commit to eating more locally throughout the month of August. We speak to seven of those who pledged and hear how they managed such an undertaking, what they learned from the experience, and whether or not they gave up!

A look back at the oil and food propaganda of the 1950s and 60s. What messages were encouraging such an easy acceptance of this non-renewable source of our global food system? Julian Darley presents some alternatives.

Food, as Cecile Andrews suggests, is a metaphor for life, in that our relationship to food is also suggestive of our relationship to living and how we connect with the world around us. "Slow is Beautiful" suggests that happiness can be found through being more mindful of our actions. Such an idea is suggestive that happiness itself is a tool to help us achieve more environmentally responsible living.