Posts Tagged 'change'

#Organic is modern, 3. #Movement post in solidarity with @SlowMoney

“This enterprise that we are a part of, with its new organic farmers and the host of small food enterprises that are emerging to bring their produce to market, is about an economy that does less harm. It’s about rebuilding trust and reconnecting to one another and the places where we live. It’s about healing the social and ecological relationships that have been broken by hundreds of years of linear, extractive pursuit of economic growth, industrialization, globalization, and consumerism. It’s about pulling some of our money out of ever-accelerating financial markets and its myriad abstractions — called, with more than a little irony, securities — and putting it to work near where we live, in things that we understand, starting with food — creating a more immediate and tangible kind of security.

This attention to and, even, celebration of the small, the slow and the local can seem, at times, rather precious against the scale of global economic, political, and environmental challenges. But it was agriculture that gave birth to the modern economy, and, as Paul Ehrlich recognizes, it must be agriculture that we fix if there is to be a postmodern economy.”

Can someone please forward this blog to Barack Obama? The government absolutely needs to stop this foolishness and focus on what we can do to make small industry in plants. @BARACKOBAMA check your twitter replies!!!

Source for this post: The Slow Money Blog, “Will the Real Food Movement Please Stand Up” 

Farmer’s market prices for organics

Some are brought in in Bushel crates from US or abroad.

At our retail food coop (~ +40-60% stocking markup):

Oberlin Market, Oberlin OH

Oberlin Market, Oberlin OH

All Local in Oberlin (George Jones Farmers Market! 6/11 Sat):

Big Kale: $2.50
Baby Kale: $5
Leaf Lettuce: $8/pound
Potted Basil: $2/each
Potted Strawberries: $3/each
Green Onions (bunches of 6): $3
Spinach: $2.5
Cattail Shoots: $.50
Beet Greens: $8
Mint, Thyme: $2/bunch
Kohlrabi: $3.00
Horseradish: $4/1.5lbs
Asparagus
Cilantro

ORGANIC (Produce Buying Club Saturday 11th June)

Gala apples .51 ea
mangoes 1.60
lemons .45
Packham pears .65
flame seedless grapes 3.90 lb.
strawberries 3.94 lb
blueberries 2.70 1/2 pt.
cantaloupe 3.00 ea
avocados 1.21 ea
broccoli 2.40
cucumber 1.49
Roma tomatoes 2.00 lb
asparagus 4.50 lb.
celery 2.97 ea
zucchini 2.25 lb.
yellow squash 2.25 lb.
red beets 1.50 lb.
green kale 2.99
collard greens 1.94
yellow onions 2.90 3# bag
shiitake mushrooms 9.10 lb.
cremini mushrooms 4.40 lb
garlic .40 each
sunflower sprouts 4.00 3 oz.

Prices change with the market! And some availability by season. -E

How to start Sheep

From the Rural Living Handbook, Published by Mother Earth News. 115-116

It hardly pays to buy young lambs and feed them to adulthood for strong-flavored mutton. The trick, instead, is to raise your first lambs into adult breeders, then slaughter their offspring as fat, tender lambs. With an acre or two of pasture, a shade tree, a third of a ton of hay for winter and a handful of grain a day, a ewe lamb will mature in a year and, if bred, produce a lamb or two of her own, plus five to eight pounds of wool. After maturing on its mother’s milk and a little grain and graze, each of your new lambs will provide you with a wonderful fleece hide and around 50 pounds of delicious meat.
Continue reading ‘How to start Sheep’

The Oberlin 2025 Planning Meetings

I just attended the final community feedback meeting for Oberlin’s planning commission to craft a plan for Oberlin in 2025. They have been held by the College, City, Library, different Non-profits, Churches.. etc. This one was held by the WRLC. If you live in Oberlin, I doubt you haven’t been invited to one. Fascinating table and the ability to be heard by city government. Really, the ability to craft our future as an area.

So exciting that we can build and prepare these networks to be ready for whatever happens. We should decide to go on a “green belt” that would be around Oberlin (the School district) and would provide Oberlin’s restaurants and schools with fresh healthy food, and Oberlin’s residents (esp. low-income) with a chance to grow on their own land to start.

If anyone in Oberlin is interested in growing, go with it! Get those seeds in and see if you can help it grow. It was organic gardening that got me started along a path that others can follow to be our future agricultural economy: access, vegetable/community gardening, small animals, farm intern, market gardener … (program at LCCC?)
In Massachusetts, an organization that I recommend ithe New Entry Sustainable Farm Project (http://nesfp.org/). They are amazing and have a class that leads into an intro program where you practice CSA growing on 3/4 acre.

For anyone who’s interested in Energy sustainability, BU has a great grad school program on it, very good and some of the top energy and environment professors in the country there. For energy, try to do something tangible like a utility-scale solar field or reducing how much you/we use. Here, last night I had great luck challenging the city council people that were there on it; they took up the challenge.

I hope that as we move forward we can rise to meet these challenges, as a nation and globally. A shout out to the folks in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts who are now beginning the 2 community discussion meetings on these topics!
-Eddie
440-935-5434
twitter http://twitter.com/eddiemill/
ag mini-blog http://eddiemill.tumblr.com/

A Systems Perspective 3: Nature and Econ

Post! Executive Outline:

Economics as a guide to policy|discipline|business|development typically undervalues Marginal Cost.
1. Resources *Natural capital to make manufactured stuff*
2. Oil is artificially low
3. Other environmental inputs= services
4. The commons

An increase in Marginal Cost would universally better off society.
1. Reduce | Reuse | Conserve –> Lessen material dependence
2. Reduce Energy/person –> Secure our country from Middle East
3. Focus on efficiency –> Reduce waste which hurts services
4. Produce less corn.

Finally, a policy solution without silly cap-and-trade or clean energy, which generates revenues by being harsher on unsustainable businesses.Increase the marginal cost of resources, to decrease their use. Read on, dear reader. But be prepared to comment if you finish it all.
-EM

Continue reading ‘A Systems Perspective 3: Nature and Econ’

A Systems Perspective 2: Oil, Energy, and Recessions

A recession is defined as “a significant decline in [the] economic activity spread across the country, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.” (New Bureau of Economic Research) It’s a little vague, and I remember Bush not wanting to announce an official “recession” back in 2008. Well, it was (is) one, and here’s the related chart:

For some of my background on recession writing, view:

  • http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/economic-recessions/
  • http://eddiemill.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/food-and-climate-change/

This will be a post about oil and energy: what I used to write about optimistically (MaPSblog) but now see the extent of our fucked-ness. Read on, dear reader. As promised, a new economics post will be up Friday. This is post 2/3 of “A Systems Perspective”: Environmental Implications of America today.

What’s different?

Continue reading ‘A Systems Perspective 2: Oil, Energy, and Recessions’

A Systems Perspective 1: Resources in Country growth

What we make & have and how we get it.
This is one of my academic posts based mainly on class theory of International Economics, History, Geography, and IR, along with my development economics post Agricultural Trade Doesn’t Work for Poor People , and a sociology posting The Next Globalization is Local . Today I explore the hypothesis that we ascended to economic empire by resource-use (and debt- other post & Other Post Nicole Foss ..) reliance in Economic growth, and use that to extrapolate outwards in my blog about a response to a pending resource recession.
1880-1953

The US ascention to greatness

I hope to prove with this post, like all my other posts, that Economy is not separate from the environment, and history has a large impact on the future of the USA. Information about online
masters degrees
is available for people who want to further explore global growth and economics issues. Advanced study is often beneficial for moving toward a full understanding of the complexities of our modern economy.

Economic history growth of the Economy:

World Economic Finance and how we ascended 1879-1945: the United States grew absolutely and relatively in relation to other countries at this time, due to capital intensive production (steel), resource intensity (factories for export and trade), and internal composition of our business sectors during this time. Conditions for growth were ripe, and there was a ton of land for taking. We expanded our transportation infrastructure, cultivated a secondary (internal) demand for goods and services, and invested heavily in our non-renewable resource extraction (table 1). In California, as an example, “earthy goods” of timber, gold, coal, oil, fish, agricultural products, natural gas and energy are a big source of productivity, combined account for around 40%-70% of where people were employed in productive California (table 2). There was a 64% resource intensity gain of GDP during this time period that we grew 1879-1941.. Just look at these tables:
Resource development is a compelling and under-told story of history.

Walker, Richard A. 2001

Often, this value depletes the source it’s built on. It’s sort-of a “resource bonanza” capitalism that made private property, surplus, money and investment; in a word <b>growth</b>. Where did this welfare come from? Since the industrial revolution, production systems did change a lot during this time, and regional transportation networks took off like the modern-day internet. But if we’re looking to replicate real growth in other countries (or our own) in the present day and avoid recession, it necessarily involves real. production. on this sort of scale by human means. And it better be sustainable, too.. It’s hard to imagine a future society with no environment left. FYI, there are plenty of precedents for recovery for the US but most often it’s going to war that eventually gives us the boost.
for a recession: see other post

Continue reading ‘A Systems Perspective 1: Resources in Country growth’

Local in Boston III: Whole Foods?

I am going to go ahead and say that I am in support of the Whole Foods model, but I don’t shop there. (It’s like Cap-and-trade..) The key reason is this: the agriculture they support there is sustainable, and the demand they capture is mainstream. Thank you, Whole Foods, for supplying fresh and sustainable produce to Boston and the surrounding areas. I just wish I could afford it..

more: Whole Foods!
Continue reading ‘Local in Boston III: Whole Foods?’

Local in Boston, Part 2

Hello,
Each week, I like to visit and write about one local group in Boston. It’s part company profile, part a tribute to great food everywhere. Check in each week for a new destination in the local food movement!

Also, be sure to visit my pages for more updates on different projects. (top bar). If you want to be featured or work together, email eddiemill@gmail.com.
-Eddie

This week: Local in Boston, Part 2: City Feed and Supply! Specialty Grocery Store and Cafe in Jamaica Plains.
Continue reading ‘Local in Boston, Part 2′

Economic Recessions

Economic Recessions Post 12/22/09
With the failure of Copenhagen (my MAPSBLOG post), it’s time to start thinking about serious depression, causes and strategies for when it gets worse. Click on, if you want. This may be my last post of this certain style as I’m considering changing the blog to be more real-time deadline appropriate. Hopefully a well-researched and justified account of the times we are living in as Americans right now, click:
Continue reading ‘Economic Recessions’

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