Resilience: Focusing on the Global Rich and Corporations | New Farming Model
Climate Action Must Now Focus on the Global Rich and their Corporations
Stream Farm – A New Model for New Entrants
Two new articles at Resilience.org this week worth discussing.
The first is one that I believe will appeal to many here.
It is really important that we – that is, the vast majority of humanity who will or already are suffering the effects of dangerous climate change – move past “national action plans” and start to take action immediately against two groups largely responsible for climate change. They are the 100 or so corporations responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions and the wealthiest 10% of the global population responsible for 50% of consumption emissions. To put the latter in perspective, if this 10% reduced their consumption to the level of the average European that would produce a 30% cut in global emissions.
As we hurtle into 2019, we need to immediately shift to actions against the ultra-wealthy and the uber-powerful. It is long past time for changing how we talk about climate change. At some point, we will need social movements capable of changing everything, but right now we need to relentlessly focus our actions on that small group of people profiting off the destruction of the world, and not wait in vain on governments to do it for us.
I think they make a really good point. We cannot depend on governments to save us. However, the article does not tell us how we are going to do this.
Any ideas?
Next article is for the farming/gardening lovers here.
Sixteen years ago, James and Henrietta Odgers left behind their London lives and found themselves owners of a 250-acre farm in Somerset. But for them, food production wasn’t the sole focus of the operation: “In London our focus was on the regeneration of degraded urban communities, and we always knew that an extension of that thinking would be worked out in a rural context,” James explains. “We wanted to focus in on what’s gone wrong with rural communities, and what would be the best way to encourage them to thrive once again.”
Thirteen years later, they have nine different enterprises running on their 250 acres. Some support a full livelihood, some a partial livelihood and some are just getting going. “We’ve had lots of lows and highs,” James points out. “We’ve got five families here at the moment, and the aim would be to try to have up to ten families earning a livelihood from this land.”
How does it work? These are the cornerstones of the model.
The key is shared ownership.
So you have a chunk of land. A farm. There is housing for five families who are working nine different types of farming.
James and Henrietta started by focussing on beef and lamb, and that has remained at the heart of the Stream Farm model, with their 170 pedigree Dexter cows and flock of Hampshire Down sheep. The model has expanded to include a further seven enterprises including Devonshire Gold chickens, apple juice, still and sparkling spring water, fresh and smoked rainbow trout, honey and eggs.
Unless you inherit a farm or have lots of money, most cannot afford to get into farming. This seems like a way to do it.
Any comments?
Comments
Big Al . . . sort of thinking of you here . . .
So . . . voting and depending on government action is a waste of time. I'll still vote, but I don't feel like I can depend on the government to fix this. What do you think?
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
our little farming community
exists because a camp owner used their family farm to create a mixed use production for food for the camp(s), selling direct to the community on Fridays, and hosting community dinners as well as pricey dinners with wine and entertainment. Pasture raised eggs, pork, beef, and many veggies we don't grow. There is also a local couple who are large scale fermenters and cooperate with the other farmers.
So that whole scene (well there were a few old producers around) came about because one of the kids went out west and learned to farm and came home with some of his network selling his folks on the concept. The camp program now includes farming and cooking. We can move forward. We have to believe we can and act.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I was thinking about your situation
When I read this article. Sounds like your group has been doing it for many years. Cool.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
The only effective way to target the global rich
And the companies that profit from the destruction of our earthly resources is complete divestment. We'd have to starve the beast of profits. Problems is, how would we live in the interim?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Good question about how to live, and we should hurry
with planning and implementation because:
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Prospective farmers, check the community out closely.
That Somerset model might not work for you. In areas (especially near cities -- and their lucrative markets you'd hope to be supplying) where land is at a premium, many communities have strict rules about how many households can occupy a given piece of land. Some of this is for sanitation issues; some is about preserving greenspace; some is just arbitrary BS to keep property values high and the "wrong" people from moving in. For the same reasons, subdividing land to get around these rules may also be prohibited. It all can stymie your plans. Check before you buy. What this means in practical terms is that various models of communal living, which would be significantly more economical, and more community-engendering, are verboten in many communities. There are all kinds of philosophical inconsistencies in this, as money is what rules. Every community wants rich people to move in and build a mansion on a useless showcase estate. Far fewer want cash-poor homesteaders or permaculturists.
There is someplace where you can do what you want to do, but be prepared to look far and wide for it.
The rural midwest
and most of rural Texas are available but close to cities . . . no. And you ae in trouble if the rich decide your town is cute. Clifton, Texas is an example of this. The retired rich moved in and now the locals can't afford to live there.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Good sources of info here
Think it is mostly effective to dig in and make ourselves self sustaining. The young, bored and restless will go after the fat cats. Establish a model of preservation for the global warriors to return to. Some of us old folks have neither the energy nor resources to attack the elite power structure. We can show by example what is possible on a local level. The concept of comfort is becoming more vague with time.
I'm using
the show by example method to the young ones in my extended family. About 40 of us all live in the Portland/Vancouver metro area.
Some of you may remember my mentioning buying 3.2 acres of rural land a few months ago.
A brief update.
The local PUD requires an address before they can bring power to the property. I need power to run the pump in the well. The water will irrigate the new farm.
I just got an email from the county issuing me an address.
Due to the holidays, the PUD people are behind/preoccupied/vacationing and will not be able to process the install til after the New Year.
Meanwhile, I continue to create a large compost pile, gathered from neighbors around my housing tract in Vancouver, Wash. I've taken 5 pickup and trailer loads of bagged up leaves and have piled and mixed them with soil and manure.
Purchased a new Kubota tractor with a front bucket and a box scraper attachment and a brush mower attachment for zero down zero interest 5 year contract and got $2000 off the price for using Kubota Credit financing.
Also got a discount from the dealer for $1000 and $600 off the second attachment. Everything came in at under $16,000.
In early spring I will add biochar to the pile and, if I can find a source, fish bones and carcasses. Bucket loads of coffee grounds are coming from one of my grandaughters who works at a coffee stand part time.
Other family members are helping out with food scraps and occasional help clearing brush and burning stumps.
Yesterday, I drove out there (72 miles one way) to see where the sun shaded the acres at winter solstice and to check the level of the creek, which I could jump over 3 months ago when I bought the property.
It was not only up about 2 ft. but there was an 18" salmon spawning below where I was standing. That was amazing to see.
I hope to begin a small garden this spring and the whole family are excited about helping out.
From this point going forward, I will submit an essay to keep everyone informed with my progress as the "Farm" proceeds.
Thanks for the info on the Stream Farm Model, Marilyn. I saw some good ideas there.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Sounds like a great plan
You can't lose with those numbers. Friends, family, inspiring ideas, energy and good purpose. A success in the making. Looking forward to updates!
Peace Power
Wow . . . Amazing!
I hope you post regularly on your progress. It is inspiring!
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
if I was starting my beds again...
I would consider hugelkultur beds
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th0-nMd5kKE]
We have a neighbor on the brow of the mountain and his hugel beds on thin soil have produced a beautiful productive garden and orchard.
Our 30 year old beds are not hugels but have been mulched and composted over that time and are quite fertile too. We don't plow nor till and have not for 30 years. I do use a shovel to plant some crops like tomatoes.
Good luck with your project. Sounds exciting!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
We are using huegelkultur in the orchard we're creating.
Our site is steeply sloped, and runoff has removed most topsoil since forever -- which we now are having to restore. The hill has been timber since the Lenape occupied the area. We're using the berm-and-swale idea -- modified considerably -- to approximate the terracing one sees in places like Indonesia and the Philippines. This will protect the trees that we are keeping there (they presently fall on a frequent basis in storms because the soil is too shallow to anchor themselves for old age) and provide beds for forest food plantings that we are introducing or expanding when we find it on-site (e.g., wild chanterelles and ramps). Some areas that are more open to the sun will hold the fruit trees, with only a few larger hardwoods retained to punctuate the orchards and keep the storms from damaging the more delicate plantings.
It's a massive project, and we won't really know if it's successful for some years yet. If you are doing this on a slope, you need to do the entire slope at once, so you don't have runoff in a storm backing up behind your fresh berm and washing it out. Our berms are between eight and fifteen feet apart, depending on what we plan to grow on them and what the slope needs to soften the runoff's speed and volume.
We use limbs that have fallen, roughly arranged to follow the contours, and throw smaller brush behind those to catch the leaves that fall and create a baffle to slow down any runoff that wants to seep through. We add wood chips from arborists to get more biomass with lots of surface area to support fungi that will break everything down into soil. Depending on the light levels at any point, we leave it to the fungi to do the work (the forest is a mushroom paradise), or sow cover crops over both the berms and the swales to help break it all down before adding another layer. The swales themselves are also more shallowly covered in the wood chips, to soak up the water and to create more soil that is missing. This is all done with a lasagna-gardening method of layering cardboard and chips and a light sifting of compost. The whole design together reduces a 30-degree slope to a more soil- and water-retentive 15 to 20 degrees.
Wow, now that sounds like a good plan
Swales coupled with the hugel beds are a plus plus..not just for water retention but overall soil development. It is a great idea!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Thanks alot for that video, Lookout
Thats a great idea. I've been chipping almost everything, including the leaves, to hasten decomposition. There is about a foot of topsoil there now built up over decades of leaf fall and generous deer fertilization. Aparently, this property has been the dinner table for a herd of deer for years.
Anyway, the huglekutur looks promising. I can still utilize that method and infuse the biochar mixed compost pile I'm building. The biochar works best when it has been inoculated before hand and mixed in at root level. The carbon capture works better down there also.
Looking forward to some more great ideas from a great community here at C99%.
No suggestion will be un-appreciated!
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Need any help on your farm?
I love driving tractors and this type of equipment. Sounds like you have a great plan for gardening and I look forward to your essays about this.
BTW. Are you Don?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Yes, my Christian name
Been called other names.
Have we met?
The tractor was a great deal and I'm gettin' to old to work a shovel, especially for such a large undertaking. At least, larger than my backyard garden, which has grown out into the front yard.
I just need a bigger canvas now.
Hopefully, when I get my power installed, I'll be able to drive my electric Leaf there, recharge, and drive back.
Eventually I will have hookups for 3 or 4 motorhomes or travel trailers so anyone can come and camp, fish, hike or just get their hands dirty and drive the little Kubota.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
cutting personal consumption is nontrivial
nontrivial !
It is indeed, not the be all and end all, but a 30% cut in global emissions is, again, non trivial.
And more importantly, it is something everyone can do. easily. without lifting a finger. heh.
The second thing that 'we the people' can do is continued mass demonstrations.
This is what Chris Hedges and XR (Extinction Rebellion) recommend.
Stop traffic on major thoroughfares which impact commerce, are highly visible, create the most chaos and get mainstream reporting. e.g. EX just had a mass demonstration in front of the BBC. This is also the strategy of the gilets jaunes and had been used in France for many demonstrations.
Thank you bringing this to us mh!
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Boycotting
Seems like we should be more actively boycotting stuff. However, that can just end up hurting workers and employees rather thanthe fat cats.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
And even if you don't buy the stuff normally
say you're boycotting it. I pretty much stopped buying anything new. I go to a lot of yard sales, and the useful stuff is the stuff no one seems interested in. It's also good to learn how to fix stuff. The internet is gold for tracking down videos, parts and info on what you need to do. It helps to learn as much about cars as you can, at least enough to not to be taken advantage of, and maybe do some work yourself. I sort of ended up with Jeeps, mainly because I owned one, and had to learn how to fix it. You can still get parts and there are a bunch of enthusiasts posting on how to repair and mod them. The ride kind of sucks on the older ones, but at least it's not too big a mystery.
I practice the five Rs
Reduce
Repair
Repurpose
Reuse
Recycle.
The more of us that practice this the better our environment.
And the more money we retain and circulate in our own neighborhood.
A win-win-win.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Old New England saying
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
or do without
Personal-scale changes
Cutting personal consumption by itself won't stop the ravages of global capital, but it's still important. We're sliding down the global climate change slope, it's too late to stop or reverse it, but we can still do some good by slowing the rate of change. Any action which makes the slope less steep will give society and nature more opportunity to adapt.
actions against the global rich
How about actions against their yachts and luxury cars? To accomplish anything meaningful thousands of people have got to be willing to go to jail and be physically harmed by the police.
Vermonter
Cars and yachts will deteriorate on their own.
Destroying them may make you feel good, but it doesn't do much to alter the situation, since the bastids will just replace them. Both are effectively money sinks, and their upkeep employs people. Their replacement just keeps the fossil-fuel-based auto industry going that much longer, employing others but also belching crap into the air and soil and water in their manufacture and in their use.
If your goal is vandalism for its own sake, you'd be wasting everyone's time, energy, and credibility. And you'd most likely end up in jail, keeping that system going while you get three square per day. It's a strategy, I suppose.
If your goal is to disrupt the system, focused sabotage is another strategy. It's one path in the tearing-down side I mentioned in another comment a couple of days ago. And there are ways to do some of that without getting caught and going to jail. It's not my favored approach, and I certainly wouldn't discuss it on the Internet if it were.
Think. What do the PTB rely on to maintain their power? Not what are the symbols or perks of power, but what are the tools of power? If you want to reduce their hegemony, hit those enabling resources.
Meanwhile, I work on the creative side of things, building what we'll need as everything goes to hell.
One legal method
that is effective is to deal in cash only whenever possible.
The banksters make money off every credit card transaction. If everyone used cash, it would cut their income tremendously and keep the greenbacks circulating in your local economy.
Also, do not use a bank for any of your checking accounts. Use a Credit Union and leave as little as possible in your account.
I personally would rather keep my savings in cash under the mattress, so to speak, than in an institution that is only paying me .002% in interest.
(OK, maybe a little more than .002%.)
Cut up your credit cards. Credexit.
Learn to barter, it may come to that anyway.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I don't think we
need to destroy property.
All that does is get people mad at you across the political spectrum.
As much as I support the French protests, I hate it when they wreck property, especially historical buildings.
dfarrah
XR is doing mass *nonviolent* protests
Huge numbers of people...
At gating points for traffic and businesses...
They have organized in nyc, LA, and ?DC iirc...
The leaders have studied nonviolent disruption tactics and are appling them. Here is a link for u.s. organization https://www.facebook.com/ExtinctionRebellionUS/
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Stepping up! 3.5% of us is all it takes!
...
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I found my yellow vest
at Harbor Freight for $4.50. There are some online for $1.69 w/out the reflective stripes.
I'm ready.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
The biggest thing they want
is constant approval and adoration(see Trump), and to see our envy and out need. When they say "please clap", don't. If they deserve no respect, don't give it. Scorn, disrespect, obscene gestures help. That said, I think we better learn how to fight back better than what we're doing.
Hi mh, hope all is well. Great series.
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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Thank you!
That is all great stuff!!
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Any way
The idea of an international movement against the global rich is a really good idea. We don't seem to have the ability to turn our dissension into action, at least effective action. The tactics in other countries could translate into something TPTB couldn't counter here easily. The idea of a world walkout to protest income inequality has a lot of weight. If one country goes police state, the whole world will be watching.
Very good points . . .
I am interested in this strategy.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Cuba's urban farming
One of the ways that Cuba has responded to its heavy economic stresses, especially since they lost the support of the Soviet Union, is urban farming.
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farming-revoluti...
I say we need to recover lots of land in the already-built environment, and make it available to the urban poor -- who really need the fresh quality food.
Meanwhile, this essay and all these really great comments are a wonderful xms present. Thank you all! I needed to read something encouraging.
I have some land, and I garden (wife built some small huegels), and do native and medicinal plants, but I'm too physically feeble to exploit it at a subsistence scale. However, I do as much as I can.
More power to all of you!
Excellent article about Cuban urban farming
That is especially encouraging. Growing food all over Havana. Plus, switching from tractors to oxen!
Thank you and Merry Christmas!
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo