The establishment and growth, over the past century, of organic agriculture is a prime and gloriously "down to earth" example of the rising wave of The New Paradigm.
Here, in several episodes, I present extracts from some eloquent blog posts on this new agriculture from the rich archives of John Michael Greer.
24 Feb 10:
composting
Our current extravagant, energy-wasting lifestyle is not sustainable. We have to move now towards a more sustainable and holistic way life, and we already have a range of technological options available to us to help achieve this. Perhaps the simplest and most accessible of these is composting: a practical, and ecologically elegant way of boosting and maintaining soil fertility, which also highlights key principles central to a new paradigm economy and society.
Most of the compostable food, garden, and farm waste we generate currently goes into landfills, rather than being recycled into fertile soil. In "Little Steps that Matter", and "A Theology of Compost", John Michael Greer writes about this potential resource, contrasting between the "monumental absurdity of industrial society’s linear transformation of resource to waste, on ....(more)
Most of the compostable food, garden, and farm waste we generate currently goes into landfills, rather than being recycled into fertile soil. In "Little Steps that Matter", and "A Theology of Compost", John Michael Greer writes about this potential resource, contrasting between the "monumental absurdity of industrial society’s linear transformation of resource to waste, on ....(more)
23 Feb 10:
closing the circle
In his blog post "Agriculture: Closing the Circle", John Michael Greer points out the inherent superiority of organic agriculture over the established industrial methods of feeding ourselves. Here are key extracts:
"It’s extremely common for people to assume that today’s industrial agriculture is by definition more advanced, and thus better, than any of the alternatives.
(But) in a crucial sense – the ecological sense – modern industrial agriculture is radically less advanced than most of the viable alternatives.
In any field you care to name, sustainability is about closing the circle, replacing wasteful extractive models of resource use with recycling models that enable resource use to continue without depletion over the long term. ....(more)
"It’s extremely common for people to assume that today’s industrial agriculture is by definition more advanced, and thus better, than any of the alternatives.
(But) in a crucial sense – the ecological sense – modern industrial agriculture is radically less advanced than most of the viable alternatives.
In any field you care to name, sustainability is about closing the circle, replacing wasteful extractive models of resource use with recycling models that enable resource use to continue without depletion over the long term. ....(more)
23 Feb 10:
organic food and farmers markets
The rising movements of organic agriculture and farmers markets are a prime example of new paradigm forces establishing themselves before the old paradigms of industrial agriculture and global food distribution hit the wall of diminishing energy resources.
In the following extracts from John Michael Greer's blog posts on "Agriculture: the Price of Transition, he describes how we are already evolving the means to feed ourselves sustainably.
"One of the great gifts of crisis is supposed to be the way it helps sort out the difference between what’s essential and what’s not.
At the top of the list… are the immediate necessities of human life: breathable air, drinkable water, edible food. Lacking those, nothing else matters much. The first two are provided by natural cycles that industrial civilization is doing its best to mess up, but so far the damage has been localized. There are still crucial ....(more)
In the following extracts from John Michael Greer's blog posts on "Agriculture: the Price of Transition, he describes how we are already evolving the means to feed ourselves sustainably.
"One of the great gifts of crisis is supposed to be the way it helps sort out the difference between what’s essential and what’s not.
At the top of the list… are the immediate necessities of human life: breathable air, drinkable water, edible food. Lacking those, nothing else matters much. The first two are provided by natural cycles that industrial civilization is doing its best to mess up, but so far the damage has been localized. There are still crucial ....(more)
23 Feb 10:
the rise of organic agriculture
The rise of the internet is an obvious new paradigm phenomena, but there is an earlier and more fundamental new paradigm force for the good: the establishment and growth, over the past century, of organic agriculture.
The history and advantages of this holistic and "down to earth" phenomena is described very eloquently by John Michael Greer in his blog post Feeding the De-industrial Future, which I extract from here:
"In the first decades of the 20th century, an English agronomist named Albert Howard working in India began experimenting with farming methods that focused on the health of the soil and its natural cycles. Much of his inspiration came from traditional farming practices in India, China and Japan that had maintained soil fertility for centuries or millennia. Howard fused their ideas with Western scientific agronomy and the results of his own experiments to create the first modern orga ....(more)
The history and advantages of this holistic and "down to earth" phenomena is described very eloquently by John Michael Greer in his blog post Feeding the De-industrial Future, which I extract from here:
"In the first decades of the 20th century, an English agronomist named Albert Howard working in India began experimenting with farming methods that focused on the health of the soil and its natural cycles. Much of his inspiration came from traditional farming practices in India, China and Japan that had maintained soil fertility for centuries or millennia. Howard fused their ideas with Western scientific agronomy and the results of his own experiments to create the first modern orga ....(more)