We need land to grow food. We need a Community Land Bank
Jeremy Iles, The Ecologist
A Community Land Bank to negotiate and release areas of land to groups of local people could help solve our growing land crisis

Use the word bank in a conversation these days and you are unlikely to elicit the most enthusiastic of replies. Financial institutions have had a bad rap, but a new idea to create a 'bank' that provides available land to local communities keen to grow their own food is getting a much more positive response.

The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens (FCFCG), a charity that supports local people to manage their local green spaces, has launched a consultation and feasibility study into the creation of a not-for-profit Community Land Bank.

The concept is simple. The Bank would negotiate for land, hold it and then release it to user groups under legally enforceable contracts, attracting charitable funding as appropriate, and facilitate transfers of tenants (community gardening groups) across a portfolio of land holdings. The Land Bank would also arrange insurance and ensure legal and technical compliance. In effect, it would be a safe pair of hands in which both land owners and users could trust...
(17 Sept 2009)

For the World's Hungry, the Recession Is Far from Over
Ishaan Tharoor, Time
It's late morning and Minara Khatoon's five young children haven't eaten yet. They sit huddled on the dirt floor of their mud thatch hut, waiting as their mother stokes a makeshift fire with straw and dry leaves to prepare what will be their main — and perhaps their only — meal of the day. Minara has just returned to her home in the riverside village of Kapasia, 192 kilometers north of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, with a monthly supply of wheat grain given to destitute rural families like hers by the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP). The food aid helps, but only lasts Minara's landless peasant family —among the poorest of the poor in what is already Bangladesh's most impoverished district — for 20 days. Her husband doesn't work due to a chronic asthma condition so to make ends meet she toils as a maid in wealthier households during the day and at night cobbles together handicrafts to sell in a local market. "This is how we survive," says Minara, pounding fistfuls of wheat on an earthen plate, her tired face far older than that of a woman of her 30 years.

But she may soon have to find a way to do more. While many world leaders claim the worst has past, the fallout of the global financial crisis still hovers over Minara's rural hamlet. In 2009, rich western governments have kept a tighter grip on their purse strings, leading to significant funding shortfalls for international organizations dependent on government contributions. The WFP, which currently targets 108 million people on the brink of starvation in 74 countries and is entirely funded through donation, has been one of the worst affected: At the beginning of the year, it tabled a 2009 budget of $6.7 billion. By September, it had received a little more than a third of what it solicited....
(21 Sept 2009)

Awesome Tour of a Permaculture Allotment
Sami Grover, Treehugger
From permaculture design principles, to close mimicry of natural ecosystems, Permaculture is usually taught as a fairly methodical design discipline. But I learned about it somewhat differently. I make no apologies here for my bias in writing about my friend Mike Feingold - teacher, gardener, and co-conspirator who has been introducing the world, and Bristol, England in particular, to permaculture, sustainability and some fantastic varieties of fruit. It's my earnest belief the world could learn a lot from Mike - so I'm delighted to see a video on YouTube that explores his somewhat haphazard, yet incredibly productive, approach to permaculture gardening. It's also a first-hand example of why the allotment gardens that still pepper every UK town and city are such a vital resource. Read on to learn more.

For those of a more systematic mindset, Mike's take on permaculture may seem chaotic - but with decades of experience in sustainable farming across the globe - from Africa to India to the Middle East and Europe - he seems to have a six sense for utilizing nutrient and resource flows, and minimizing the need for inputs of human labor or fossil fuels - all of which is at the heart of permaculture. Enough of the introduction - Mike Feingold is the best introduction to Mike Feingold. Check out the video below to watch a wonderful man at work. Thanks for the inspiration Mike!
(21 Sept 2009
I do have to add here that despite Mike's somewhat unorthodox appearance, he is one of Bristol's living treasures. -KS

Plans for White House farmers' market move forward
Ed Pilkington, The Guardian
The quiet revolution spreading steadily across the US in the way Americans produce and consume food is about to acquire a powerful endorsement in the form of a farmers' market planned for one of the better-known corners of the capital. It will be sited a block away on the north side of a large white house and will have the backing of its occupier, one Michelle Obama.

The plan is the latest building block in the movement the first lady has been seeking to build over food and health since she entered the White House in January. Though her office is refusing to engage with media speculation, the telltale signs are there that she plans to extend her campaign - launched in March with the opening of a food garden in the White House grounds - by backing a farmers' market just a stone's throw from her presidential home.

Excitement levels among web-savvy organic food enthusiasts went through the roof today in anticipation. It was disclosed that an application had been made to the local city authorities in Washington DC to close Vermont Avenue on the north flank of the White House to traffic on Thursday afternoons for six weeks until the end of October...
(9 Sept 2009)

Getting Serious about Local and Regional Food: the UDSA, the East Wing, and the West Wing working together
Eddie Gehman Kohan, Obama Foodarama blog
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan just sent out a really exciting memo: "Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems," which goes far beyond fantasies of how a new food system might look, and straight into how this gets both funded and created. Merrigan's new memo details how to use USDA funding for the kind of projects that are being developed by First Lady Michelle Obama and her food policy team, such as school lunch infrastructure, farmers markets, farm to school programs, cooking classes. Mrs. Obama's food policy team is led by White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass, and also includes Senior Adviser Jocelyn Frye and Melody Barnes.

Over the last few months, Merrigan has been working with the First Lady's team, as has her boss, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, and all of this has been fairly under the radar. But it's clear the USDA is now completely in line with the First Lady's goals of more nutritious, healthy foods for everyone, as well as interested in developing the kind of community and school infrastructures that makes this possible. Over this summer, Secretary Vilsack's new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign has been the most visible part of USDA's newly honed policies...and it's a good indicator that USDA is very interested in supporting smaller and family farmers, with a renewed focus on local and regional food systems. All this food agenda work is in direct support of many of President Obama's other goals, too, for a wide range of initiatives, such as saving billions of dollars in health care costs by reducing food-created diseases like obesity and diabetes; better educational achievement, because kids are nourished; keeping local wealth within local economies; reducing climate change...etc. Secretary Vilsack has been talking about these initiatives all summer on the Rural Tour (as well as handing out funding for hundreds of projects).

Merrigan opens her memo by writing "I suspect that many USDA programs are under-utilized by those seeking to build local and regional food systems. I would like to play the role of matchmaker during this administration...I will work to help USDA program administrators to understand how our programs may better serve your efforts to build local and regional food systems..."
(27 Aug 2009)
See Grist's take on this whole initiative, which as we all keep saying, is at least "shifting the terms of the debate." -KS

Milk 'strikes' and shortages hit Europe as UK dairy industry reels from crisis
Jamie Doward, the guardian
It is among the finest of England's dairy products; the cheese St George himself might choose when dropping in to his local for a ploughman's. But next time you are in the supermarket, take a closer look at the blocks of cheddar: an increasing proportion of the hard yellow cheese, which has been produced in England since at least 1170, does not come from within the British Isles. Figures from DairyCo, the body that campaigns for the UK's dairy industry, reveal that between January and June we imported 62,003 tonnes of cheddar compared with 48,633 tonnes in the same period last year.
And even cheddar labelled "packaged in Britain" is not the domestic product patriotic consumers may have been led to believe. It is likely to have been imported from southern Ireland but, thanks to a legal loophole, given a "British" credit because it has been wrapped in Britain.

So why is Britain now importing so much of a cheese that it gave to the world? The answers are complex, but they can be boiled down to two words, now the subject of furious farmers' protests around the globe: milk prices.

While the economics behind the price of a pint may seem of interest only to listeners of Farming Today, they go to the heart of Britain's food security programme and so have a direct impact on us all. For almost a decade, falling milk prices have seen dairy farmers complain bitterly of squeezed profits. Little attention has been paid to them, but now the aggressive buying tactics employed by major supermarket chains have prompted many smaller dairy farmers to leave the industry, claiming they cannot turn a profit from their cows, and there are renewed calls for the government to step in to save the industry...
(20 Sept 2009)
Ah, those market forces... How about we bail out some dairy farmers? -KS

Energetics of cultivation: draft animals vs. combustion engines and the Haber process
Engineer-poet, The Oil Drum
The energy use by the agricultural sector of the economy has been widely discussed and debated in the peak oil community. The amount of energy used directly at farms is not very large; typical claims for the fuel required to cover a field with a plow or other implement are in the range of one gallon of diesel per acre per pass. Assuming seeding, harvesting and 3 other passes per year, the total comes to approximately 750 MJ per acre per year. Nitrogen fertilizer applied at 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre would account for another 4600 MJ per acre1. Residues from many crops such as corn can supply over 20 GJ per acre and energy sources such as wood chips and fuel grasses are even more productive. Farming operations such as dairies have already become net exporters of energy as electricity. This suggests that even a mechanized farm can be self-sufficient in energy, and "fast crash" doom scenarios involving the collapse of farming are not very likely.

1 Farming before powered machinery
Before self-powered farm machinery, there were draft animals. They were slow to reproduce and train, and often dangerous to work. They were fed using the one quarter to one third of land fallowed as pasture at any given time. Some grain (such as oats) was also needed as supplemental feed.

Despite use of animal manures as fertilizer, the yields of the time were not very high. 40 bushels of corn (maize) per acre were typical. Combined with fallowed acreage, net productivity was a fraction of today's averages. Productivity was also low; a double-furrow plow pulled by 3 or 4 horses could only plow 2.5 acres per day.
(23 Sept 2009)

Bid to protect England's topsoil
BBC News
A strategy to protect the health of England's soils and ensure they continue to store carbon dioxide, will be published by the government later.

Experts say good soil not only produces strong crops, but is an effective store of carbon, and can reduce flooding by absorbing rain and river water.

But Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said population growth, transport and housing are threatening the soil.

Farmers have welcomed the government's serious response to the issue.

The new strategy will include supporting farmers in managing their soil, a framework to protect peat habitats, safeguards for soils in urban areas and prevention of soil pollution...
(24 Sept 2009)

Almost 4 million Kenyans on food aid as drought deepens
Xan Rice, the guardian
The devastating drought sweeping across Kenya is causing widespread hunger, thirst and, in the case of cattle, death. Pictures of hundreds of cow carcasses being tipped into a mass grave near Nairobi highlight the scale of the natural disaster – and the clumsy or even negligent efforts of the government to deal with it.

Aware that the drought was likely to cause pastoralists to lose significant parts of their herds, the government announced a 500m shilling (£4.1m) plan last month to buy weak animals from farmers for 8,000 shillings (£65) each. The plan provided for the animals to be transported by truck to the Kenya meat commission depot in Athi River, a town near Nairobi, where they would be held, fed, and slaughtered, with the meat sold to recoup costs.

But many of the trucks transporting the cows hundreds of miles from as far away as north-eastern province, had insufficient water and food on board, causing large numbers of animals to die along the way. Of those that arrived alive, many soon perished owing to a lack of pasture in the holding bay.
(17 Sept 2009)

thanks to kalpa again for this article.