Tag Archives: climate change

CSA farms: Healthy Islands Amid Systems Collapses?

Can community farms (CSAs) help mitigate the difficulties and challenges that may arise during crises or system collapses?

This is a 20-minute talk and slide-show I prepared for participation in a Sustainable Roundtable discussion of systems collapses. I was asked to present on the topic of how community farms (CSAs) might ease, or mitigate the harsh condition in the case of economic or environmental crises.

The talk and slide show are intended to introduce the topic, and to stimulate thought, conversation, and planning. To meet a community challenge, we need Community Intelligence (CI) – the Hive Mind. I invite you to participate: if you have thoughts, questions, or contributions for this topic, please add them to the comments section. Over time I will compile them to provide a community resource.

2024: The Year of Agroecology (again)

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by Steven McFadden – January 1, 2024
For the sake of the Earth, the people, the animals, the plants, and for the sake of my own need to advocate, I raise my blog voice and declare 2024 to be The Year of Agroecology. Once again.

Twelve months ago I declared 2023 to be The Year of Agroecology, and before that the same in 2022. It’s something that needs to be declared again, and again, and again. Severe matters before us all. Opportunity, too.

While my blog voice may be slight in isolation, it is part of a wide and wise global chorus: millions of voices of people who touch the earth on behalf of all humanity, and who recognize the overwhelming need for transformation of our food systems with clean land, clean food, justice for all. They are acting for change. “The Year of Agroecology” is but one rhetorical frame, among 8 billion possibilities. But it’s a momentous frame.

Farm and food systems are the foundation of all the rest of our world with all its techno splendors and dangers. If we get our foundation right–clean, just, radiantly healthy–what is built upon that foundation has a far-improved likelihood of being wholesome, just, and sustainable.

The authentic, multifaceted global vision of agroecology is worthy of worldwide embrace: genuine, committed engagement to activate a main chance for us all as we pass through a turbulent era of transition characterized by profound social upheaval, wide-ranging environmental contamination, and an ongoing, in-your-face cascade of climate-change catastrophes.

For sober consideration, check out The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. Each year for the last six years this report has highlighted the reality that intensification of wars, punishing climate extremes, and economic turbulence, combined with inflation and inequality, are knocking the nations and corporations of the world off track. In the report’s estimation we’ll not meet basic targets set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). That’s not an abstract academic concept. It has harsh real-world consequences.

For balance, check out Food Tank’s podcast highlighting food system wins in 2023, and also predictions for 2024 from ag and food experts.

Agroecology is a grace that needs to be welcomed widely in 2024 for it espouses a way of life in respectful relationship with nature, rather than a relentless profit-driven business model, and a tsunami of marketing angles.

Agroecology is a science, a practice, and a worldwide movement embraced for the sake of clean land, clean water, clean food, and justice for the human beings who touch the earth for all of us, or otherwise work to make our food supply possible.

For all these reasons and more, agroecology deserves acknowledgement and prominence as the year of, the decade of, the century of, and more. For 2024 and onward, I respectfully add my voice to the agroecological chorus. Let us make our Beauty Way visions real.

Oeuvre Moeuvre: my earthwise works

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Oeuvre Moeuvre – On the occasion of my 75^th birthday this month, my wife Elizabeth helped me produce this short video concerning the body of my writing work over the years. That is my output or oeuvre as it would be formally known.

She also suggested that this inaugurates a new artistic genre: the moeuvre (movies about oeuvres). OK. So be it.

Likely in response to our grandiose language, Amigo and his beloved tennis ball get into the background of this clip, adding essential notes of comic relief.

Deep Agroecology: a 2-minute, slide-show primer

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As the pace of world transition intensifies, I’m moved to once again articulate in direct language my understanding of the vision held by millions of people around the world: the vision of agroecology.

Thus, I offer below a two-minute slide show with words and images characterizing some of the basic elements of the agroecological vision, and also offering a glimpse at how deep agroecology embraces the vision, then endeavors to explore further into positive possibilities.

Note: The slide interval is set at 7 seconds. You can start or stop the show with the slider control.

Literary Lights and ChatGPT shine on Deep Agroecology

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Thanks to the enterprise and good graces of the New Mexico Book Association (NMBA), I’ve been invited to a reception Celebrating New Mexico Writers at the convention center in our stucco-studded capital city.

The New Mexico Writers’ Reception is an opening event for the Santa Fe International Literary Festival.

My book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future is what secured the invitation—an invitation I was honored to receive, and pleased to accept. The reception will perhaps afford opportunities for wider understanding of agroecology and what I regard as its essential role in our raucous era of transition.

Over the last several years my attention has been focused on completing the biography of the late Navajo leader, Leon Secatero (1943-2008). I’ve not given a lot of thought or energy to agroecology or deep agroecology. Yet I still regard them as the Main Chances for positive action in our unavoidable reckoning with climate crisis, food security, earth care, and worker justice.

For the sake of digital experimentation I asked an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) program to declare what it might about “deep agroecology.” Here’s a calculated response from ChatGPT:

“Deep agroecology is a term used to describe an ecological approach to agriculture that encompasses the social, cultural, and spiritual aspects of farming as well as the economic and environmental dimensions. It recognizes the interdependence of all living things and emphasizes the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, and cultural diversity.

“It is a holistic approach to agriculture that recognizes the interconnectedness of social, cultural, ecological, and economic systems and strives to create a more just and equitable food system for all.”

There you have it, the computer brain at work. Fair enough for a start, I suppose. But it’s not enough to cause me to abandon my vocation and stop doing my own writing on this or any other subject.

One fundamental understanding of agroecology in general and deep agroecology in particular is that being directly in touch with the earth promotes good physical, mental, and spiritual health for people, animals, plants, and the whole. There’s nothing artificial about that earth-based quality of intelligence, qualities naturally intrinsic to full health.

Traditional peoples long ago recognized that in times of great personal, family, or community trauma, human beings could find emotional and psychic stability by going to the land, by deliberately touching or lying upon it, relaxing, breathing, and releasing the trauma to the embrace of Mother Earth. That creates a simple, cost-free opportunity to be filled with grounded peace, even if just for a moment. This is one of the many gifts of our home planet. In reciprocity we have the opportunity to complete a circle by offering our gratitude.

As earth changes intensify, we will always have opportunity to anchor ourselves in strength and wisdom, and then to take positive steps forward. That’s true, now even in the context of the authoritative final warning so recently delivered to the world. Positive action is still possible, still the key.

2023: The Year of Agroecolgy (again)

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by Steven McFadden – December 7, 2022

As a citizen of Earth who pays attention to reality, I feel compelled to raise my voice and declare 2023 to be The Year of Agroecology. Once again. Twelve months ago I declared 2022 to be The Year, but it’s plain that the global vision of agroecology and the actions to make it real are all the more imperative now.

Considering the state of the food world, I have not the patience to wait for some government or some non-profit organization somewhere to do the declaring. I do declare on my own.

As the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) wrote of 2022, “This year’s report should dispel any lingering doubts that the world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms.”

Around 2.3 billion people in the world were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021.
Globally in 2020, an estimated 22 percent of children under five years of age were stunted, 6.7 percent were wasted, and 5.7 percent were overweight.

Elsewhere on the national and global continuum of farms, food, and climate-change, the news is likewise perturbing.

Agriculture consumes 70% of global water resources, while emitting up to 21% of greenhouse gases, contributing to 40% of climate damage.
The human beings who do the actual labor of growing, processing, and serving our food continue to suffer harsh, unjust, and unhealthy conditions.
As ultraprocessed and chemicalized food corruption continues apace, a grievous throng of diet-related diseases afflicting women and men continues to rise.
The abysmal and cruel conditions of industrial animal agriculture continue to intensify under corporate consolidation, while calls for alternatives also intensify,

There is more, of course. But these few points more than suffice to make the argument that 2023 is a year to take action and that agroecology is our main chance. No dilly dallying, no waiting for a “perfect time.” Now is the time.

The many initiatives that fit under the wide umbrella of honest agroecology address all these issues and more with visionary, respectful, and practical approaches for clean, just, and sustainable farm, food, and life systems.

To appreciate the true spirit of agroecology and its global resonance, and to stimulate ideas on how individuals, households, communities, and institutions may participate, consider the seminal Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, Nyéléni.

Agroecology offers the world a wealth of ways to move through 2023 and the years ahead on pathways of sanity, responsibility, and beauty. Deep agroecology strives to light those pathways with information and inspiration.

For the Beauty of the Earth and Our Lives.

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Dear Readers,
Agroecology remains my passion. I continue to see it as our main chance to reckon with all of the global challenges now so fiercely active in environmental, social, and spiritual realms. Yet I’ve had little time over the last year to write directly on the subjects of our farms, our food, and our future.

For many months my work life has been focused solely on writing the biography of a visionary, native leader. There’s a bit more work to do on that project before it’s complete and I’m free to write again about deep agroecology.

In the meantime, as of July 2022, I’ve spruced up one of my older nonfiction books, Tales of the Whirling Rainbow. I’ve given it a new cover and new formatting. It’s the slimmest of volumes, but it still goes right to the heart of the matter of respecting each other and the natural world we share as the source of our lives. In that sense, it does explore the wisdom themes that are at the heart of deep agroecology. Thus in right relationship among practice and theory, I offer this small treasure to readers for the beauty of the earth and of our lives.

The edition of the book now graced with a new cover and format is available at this Amazon link as either print or eBook format.

Here’s the text from the book’s back cover:

Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a journalist’s account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an electrifying exploration of how those myths are resounding in real time.

Like an atom of gold, this wee book radiates deep beauty. It delivers authentic inspiration for our 21st Century souls.

Tales of the Whirling Rainbow conveys critical insights into core wisdom teachings at the heart of North America’s unfolding saga. Respect for these knowings is fundamental to our survival, and to our spiritual development.

As the Sun awakens and Earth changes intensify, our lives attain high velocity. At this time and in this manner, elders across The Americas informed the author, the human beings who are the different colors and faiths of the world will have opportunities to heal their web of relationships with each other, and with the natural world.

2022: The Year of Agroecology

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By Steven McFadden – 1.6.22
By the authority vested in me (and everyone else) on account of being someone with something important to say, I hereby declare 2022 to be The Year of Agroecology. Someone needed to do it. It’s time.

I hope the other 7.8 billion human beings on the earth are listening—not to me necessarily, but rather to the swelling chorus of farmers and food workers around the world who are leading the way forward, building a foundation for a clean, healthy, just, and sustainable future. That’s the essence of agroecology. That’s the opportunity before us. And that opportunity addresses a range of critical issues from climate chaos and social unrest to food quality and food security.

Although the word agroecology may sound abstract, it’s a term that’s both plain and exalted. It’s about the food we all eat, the human beings and animals who are part of that web of relationship, the essential care of the earth we all depend upon for our lives, and the utter necessity of our spiritual growth to the point where we human beings efficiently and gracefully engage our responsibility as caretakers of the earth.

We all have an opportunity to help advance the vision of agroecology, and thereby to participate in setting right the ways we human beings are in relationship with farms, food, and the future. This is the vision described in my book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future.

Agroecology is a vision now held and practiced by millions of human beings around the world. The year 2022 (and the years beyond) hold the potential and the necessity of agroecology becoming a vision held and supported by billions. That’s what it will take. That’s what we need. 2022 can be, and with wisdom will be, The Year of Agroecology.

Code Red for Humanity, Code Green for Earth

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by Steven McFadden
My primary work throughout the rest of 2021 is dedicated to researching and writing the biography of a man who was a kind, knowledgeable, and skillful leader for the Navajo people, as well as for people around the world. Having died in 2008, he left a legacy of insight into the well being of our earth, and indications for time-tested ways of supporting hózhó – life in balance and beauty.

While at first a biography might appear to be a divergence from the topics of agroecology and deep agroecology, it’s actually related. Part of the biography, through the subject’s eyes, is an exploration of how we might reckon wisely with the catastrophes described in Code Red for Humanity, the alarming new UN report. In my view it’s the most critical report in history. The dire realities it spells out demand our global attention.

While I’m at work on the biography, I’ll continue to let people know about my book, Deep Agroecology, and to create occasional memes to call attention to the critical issues in the book, and the high, necessary vision it sets out.

Here’s a sample of the kinds of memes that I create from time to time, as the spirit moves me.