Sunday, August 16, 2015

Just One Backyard: One Man’s Search for Food [feedly]

Just One Backyard: One Man's Search for Food
// City Farmer News

onebNew book.

"We have all of the pieces of the puzzle that are needed to create sustainable food systems … we just need to put them together. It isn't a matter of choice, it is a matter of survival."

By Dr. Zahina-Ramos (Dr. Z)
He holds a M.S. degree in the biological sciences and a Ph.D. in geosciences.
Published Jan 2015

Sustainability is an entertaining and enlightening tale of how Dr. Zahina-Ramos turned his urban residential backyard into a research study to measure the many benefits of urban agriculture. This is no dry lecture based on puffed-up rhetoric. Dr. Z has skillfully accomplished one of the most difficult challenges- weaving heartwarming storytelling and scientific facts together in a way that even a novice can appreciate and enjoy.

The first half of the book takes the reader on a thoughtfully told journey through the history of food growing, from ancient times through the 21st century, carefully describing how our food supply has become dominated by an industrialized production system that is dependent on unsustainable practices and harms the environment.

By drawing upon historical fact, his family's experiences and stories told to him by food gardeners around the world, its eloquent message remains fresh right up to the end. The second half of the book gets down to the nitty-gritty of what sustainable urban food growing is and the numerous benefits it can give. Several chapters describe the social, environmental, ecological and economic benefits of urban agriculture in a way that has never been possible before- with hard numbers, rather than broad generalizations.

Even though the current unsustainable food system is fraught with problems, Dr. Z lays out solutions that can provide for the needs of the 21st century. The result is inspirational and empowering. This timeless work is destined to become the foremost book on the benefits from and necessity of urban food growing.

See the book.


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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

What did JK Rowling tell two aspiring authors on Twitter? - CSMonitor.com [feedly]



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What did JK Rowling tell two aspiring authors on Twitter? - CSMonitor.com
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2015/0816/What-did-JK-Rowling-tell-two-aspiring-authors-on-Twitter
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

The GOP as the progressive party

For the last forty years, mind you, America has been moving steadily along an easily defined trajectory. We've moved step by step toward more political and economic inequality, more political corruption, more impoverishment for those outside the narrowing circles of wealth and privilege, more malign neglect toward the national infrastructure, and more environmental disruption, along with a steady decline in literacy and a rolling collapse in public health, among other grim trends. These are the ways in which we've been progressing, and that's the sense in which the GOP counts as America's current progressive party: the policies being proposed by GOP candidates will push those same changes even further than they've already gone, resulting in more inequality, corruption, impoverishment, and so on.

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The Archdruid Report
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.it/
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

The Archdruid Report: The Cimmerian Hypothesis, Part Three: The End of the Dream [feedly]

Interesting reflection on the ingrained patterns of "thinking" of those trying to con the rest of us into a giant boondoggle bridge and other aspects of remnant Eisenhower-ism.

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The Archdruid Report: The Cimmerian Hypothesis, Part Three: The End of the Dream
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.it/2015/07/the-cimmerian-hypothesis-part-three-end.html
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."