7 Stories For Today - 19th May 2015
On some days I am posting recent stories on
1) Raw-Milk Loophole: Goatshare Programs
The hottest trend, at least in southern Alaska, is to split the ownership of a goat with your neighbors. It's like Zipcar for goats, as long as you keep an incredibly liberal understanding of how Zipcar works! Raw milk is a controversial food topic right now, with contradictory laws and even less consensus on its benefits and risks. But in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, among other places, there’s one loophole, a goat-share program. Read about it, can work anywhere ...
click here to read the The Conversation news article
4) Heritage Salvage
- Food Forests
- Forest Relaxation
- Local Food Hubs
- Permaculture
- and some other interests
1) Raw-Milk Loophole: Goatshare Programs
The hottest trend, at least in southern Alaska, is to split the ownership of a goat with your neighbors. It's like Zipcar for goats, as long as you keep an incredibly liberal understanding of how Zipcar works! Raw milk is a controversial food topic right now, with contradictory laws and even less consensus on its benefits and risks. But in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, among other places, there’s one loophole, a goat-share program. Read about it, can work anywhere ...
2) Residents' Control Stops Deforestation?
Expanding agriculture is the biggest driver of deforestation around the world. However, giving local residents control over forested land leads to better environmental management. An estimated 1.2 billion people rely on forests for their livelihood, including about 60 million indigenous people who are almost entirely dependent on them, says the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) in a 170-page report. Expanding agriculture accounts for 73 percent of the world's forest loss. Balancing competing interests is not easy in the face of a growing world population, but forests must be viewed as key food producers and thus be better managed, rather than be regarded as a barrier to agriculture ... please read on ...
3) Tasty Forest Foods Can Solve Global Hunger
About one in nine people globally still suffer from hunger, with the majority living in Africa and Asia. The world’s forests have great potential to improve their nutrition and ensure their livelihoods. Forests are essential to global food security, particularly when considering the importance of diverse, nutritionally-balanced diets. Forests are key to protecting biodiversity, and for mitigating the effects of climate change. This is well known, and I do post several links to articles on this subject. I repeat attention to this myself, and so do many other bloggers and journalists, because forest contribution to alleviating hunger and improving nutrition has been somewhat neglected. Forests, woodlands and orchards can complement agricultural production and give an economic boost to some of the world’s most vulnerable regions. Read on for Four Ways that forests benefit food security ....
4) Heritage Salvage
If you’re a Northern California builder, I highly recommend you stop in at Heritage Salvage in Petaluma. They have tons of used wood, hardwood slabs, and all manner of recycled and soulful building materials. Are there any other 'depots' like this around the world doing and serving this essential recycling work?
5) Forest Bathing: Our Connection to Nature
I frequently post links to Forest Bathing Articles, so here is another, and its quite good really. If you’ve ever been asked to “go to your happy place” or “think of something relaxing,” you may have envisioned yourself on a family camping trip, a leisurely stroll through a forested park, or working in a garden. When we think of words that are associated with “relaxing” or “calming,” we often come up with visions of nature, including the sounds of rain or a babbling brook, or the smells of wildflowers. No matter where your “happy place” is, one thing is for sure, we are connected to nature by our very core ... but why do we deny this? Over the past few years there has been a push in the scientific community to find out just how beneficial it is for us to spend time in nature. There have also been 'forest bathing gurus' establishing their own interpretations of forest bathing, setting up colleges that are quite expensive to attend, and churning out facilitators charging people as much as $100 or more to walk with them to re-learn what we should be able to do through instinct. With Bards In The Woods we do this fairly freeform and encourage your sense of wonder to guide you. All you need to pay is something for the picnic table :-). Anyway, this is still a great read ...
6) 10 Health Food Misconceptions
Fancy packaging and convincing advertising makes it tricky for hungry customers when it comes to eating well. 64% of customers are influenced by healthy food products, according to the Institute of Food Technologists. Eight out of 10 adults have made some effort to eat healthier within the last year. But with so many choices and personal convincing that there is little time, it can seem hard to tell what's actually good for us and what's just a health fad. So what is the scoop on which foods are actually not as healthy as they appear, and what can we replace them with. Personally, I would say avoid everything with packaging. Its its go packaging its already unhealthy. Why? Because they feel the need to use packaging that starts off being planetary unhealthy ... but read on, some surprises for many people here ...
7) Embracing The Local
'Geographies Of Nowhere, Regaining A Sense Of Place, And Embracing The Local' is the title of another amazing essay by Willowcrow. She is one writer I always seek out to see what she is writing next. Here she says ... I sit and write these words while I’m traveling for my work to a conference halfway across the country in another nameless city that is typically a carbon copy of another nameless city I visited the year before. Cities blend together after a while, because there really isn’t much difference between them. There are the same Mariotts and Hilton Hotels with their elaborate and embarrassing, excesses, same busy streets, same dead-looking people scurrying about. It does give me a good opportunity to reflect upon my experiences and our larger system in which I begrudgingly take part. Today’s meditation focuses on the nature of place, its personal, civic, and spiritual connections ... so read on ...
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