Episode 299 – Solutions: Guerrilla Gardening
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The problems are obvious: food safety scandals, the death of family farming, food supply insecurity, the revolving door between corporate lobbyists and government regulators, and many more. The solution should be equally obvious: rolling up our sleeves and getting in the garden. Join us today as we explore this simple, natural solution to one of our most fundamental problems.
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Documentation
| Horse Meat, Hanford Leak, Obama’s Oscar – New World Next Week | |
| Time Reference: | 00:48 |
| Question: Why Is the McDonalds Website so Scary? | |
| Time Reference: | 01:23 |
| McDonald’s Food Scandal in Shanghai! | China Uncensored | |
| Time Reference: | 02:39 |
| Insider Threats, Poor Food, Supreme Genes – New World Next Week | |
| Time Reference: | 03:22 |
| China’s “Garbage Fed Beef” Food Scandal | |
| Time Reference: | 04:00 |
| Pink Slime – What is REALLY in your Hamburger | |
| Time Reference: | 04:08 |
| Chiquita Banana Terrorist Connections? |
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| Time Reference: | 05:04 |
| Genetic Fallacy: How Monsanto Silences Scientific Dissent | |
| Time Reference: | 07:25 |
| Dispelling the Big Ag Myth | |
| Time Reference: | 09:23 |
| Wave Of Suicides Among Indian Farmers | |
| Time Reference: | 10:08 |
| FY2013 Annual Report on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas in Japan | |
| Time Reference: | 13:12 |
| Episode 241 – The Truth About the Gene Revolution | |
| Time Reference: | 14:48 |
| William Engdahl: Seeds of Destruction | |
| Time Reference: | 17:38 |
| 5 GMO Myths Busted | |
| Time Reference: | 19:45 |
| Joel Salatin – Folks, This Ain’t Normal | |
| Time Reference: | 27:23 |
| The EyeOpener Report- How to Boycott Big Food | |
| Time Reference: | 32:48 |
| Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA | |
| Time Reference: | 35:52 |
| Introduction: My Community Garden Journal – Week 1, 2015 | |
| Time Reference: | 44:18 |
| Food Is Free project | |
| Time Reference: | 46:27 |
| Food is Free Project: How to Build a Raised Wicking Bed! | |
| Time Reference: | 47:14 |
| “That’s the Catch (Question Everything)” by Henk Mutsaers | |
| Time Reference: | 53:23 |
| Become a Corbett Report member | |
| Time Reference: | 53:47 |
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most inspirational podcast as of yet.
thanks james!
Wonderful stuff James!
See what is happening in Havana, Cuba!
You tube this: Urban Food Growing in Havana, Cuba
This episode has been an inspirational tour de force. The Corbett Report membership is the most well spent Federal Reserve bank notes! Truly an investment for the ages.
One of the topics touched on in the podcast is about the potential blight that can result from GMO foods. I am (and I think most folks here) of the position that the GMO food production (and the geoengineering), is a greater threat to our climate than the supposed man made CO2. Even Hollywood films – Interstellar – discuss this idea of a dystopian “blight,” although not directly discussing GMOs.
The best, and I mean the BEST book on gardening is John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible… In print for forever. If you look at the comment section on amazon, you’ll find people who have many years experience gardening singing all manner of praise for the book, and novices saying things like, “no big deal” and “nothing useful.” I can assure you that the books is profound in its wisdom. However, you must understand that John’s book describes a total system and to get the benefit, you must throw out everything you’ve heard and do EXACTLY what he says. I had the honor and pleasure of attending his weekly seminar for a couple of months at his spread in northern CA, drove for 6 hours to get there. It was incredibly worth it.
You must have some in-ground space to practice his methods and full sun at least 6 hours a day.
I have had mixed success with container gardening. Right now I’m having lots of difficulties because I live very near the ocean and the salt air is problematic for gardening. Also, I tried to convince my neighbors to allow me to put in a small patch of veggies where there’s sun in the common area, but they are incredible jerks and said no (they are jerks about other stuff, too.) So I don’t have enough sun for most veggies. But I try anyway and grow sprouts and microgreens. Look this up, very healthful and easy in your kitchen, or balcony if you protect them from birds.
Quite often in the many houses we’ve rented over the years, the condominium neighbors give me total grief about planting anything or even having potted plants. Geez, wonder what they’d say if we ran a prostitution ring or a meth lab. Unbelievable a**holes, but then what do you expect from Californians, who continue to wash their precious cars, lovingly, in the worst drought in decades. Can’t wait to move…
James, this is one of my favorite videos you’ve ever done. You highlighted two of my favorite gardeners, Joel Salatin and Ron Finley. I love the Ron Finley method of growing food everywhere – on rooftops, in apartment bathtubs, replacing vacant lots and artfully redesigning strips of grass. You’re right that there are countless gardening resources available online to help us to get started. With the right know-how, food can be grown nearly anywhere.
This topic is vitally important not only because it’s a way of protesting the powers that shouldn’t be, but because everyone’s health and quality of life is affected by this. One great resource for people interested is the Facebook page Grow Food, Not Lawns. https://www.facebook.com/GrowFoodNotLawns?fref=nf Their main page is http://growtest.org/
The site has some truly inspiring photos of gardening adventures of people around the world, not to mention memes about why this is such an important, and as you have said, revolutionary topic.
Really great to see Joel Salatin at ĺast on the Corbett report. I have 3 of his books including “Folks this ain’t normal” and “You can farm”. He also has written a book called “Everything I want to do is illegal” in which he describes how legislation is put in place which makes it impossible to produce and sell unadulterated,tasty, nutritional food on a small scale but favours the multi-million $ industrial food factories whose interests are not in providing nutrition but rather foods that are uniform with a long shelf-life.
This ìs probably my favourite report to date. Growing your own food really is a licence to print money as well as avoiding taxes and you finally can eat pesticide, herbicide and fungicide free food, hopefully within walking distance of your home.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in my experience it’s that it doesn’t pay to try informing people of problems with their worldviews either with facts or diplomacy. It is a waste of time and energy.
However if you spend all that time and energy creating a solution to teh problem just for yourself. somethiong that actually works that actually gets to a finished and self sustaining level. Well then you can talk all you want about the problems of the world because unlike 99% of the others these people have had to listen to, YOU actually have something to back it up with and that means a helluva lot more than hearing about how corrupt the government is.
And if there’s still people who aren’t onboard with the idea of being self sufficient? Abandon them. It isn’t worth your time and energy helping people who,
1: Don’t want to be helped.
2: Demonstrate a lack of desire to help themselves.
3: Have nothing of value that they can currently contribute to you even if you did help them that is of equal or greater value than the time, effort and resources you’d spend on saving them.
It’s harsh but its true. I say all of this in a solutions video because it is the single largest failing that I consistently see across the board not only for the “alternative movenemnt” but also pretty much the entire population in general.
It is the tendency to believe that ones emotions matter or have some effect on the outside world. There’s a lot of dead pacifists that have demonstrated otherwise. It’s what leads to the villanization of people like the Rockefellers as “the powers that shouldn’t be” or viewing the collusion of government and corporate powers as “corruption” as if somehow your opinions on what these people should or should not choose to do with the resources they have available to them matters.
Perhaps instead of villanizing people who seemingly want to kill off most of humanity you should be pondering how it is these same people control the entire planet and learn from that. They sure didn’t do it by praying to an invisible sky wizard to make it all magically happen for them. They probably didn’t sit around complaining about or too some random organization to “please pretty please do all this work for me so my life can be easier.”
These people, unlike the vast majority, put the work in. When something didn’t work they changed what they were doing. When something did work they didn’t stop there, they improved upon it. That’s why they’re at the top and others work multiple dead end jobs only to end up homeless anyways because “that’s how life is” or whatever pathetic excuse these people tend to use.
to date I have yet to see any evidence of any corruption in the world. All I can ssee is people with various types and levels of resources choosing to do wiith them what they will. Even though some of those people’s desires and actions go directly against my own I’m not dumb enough to fault them for it. If I want it to change then I need to take what I’ve got and apply it in such a way that I can eventually get my way.
People like the Rockefellers have earned their place at the top. They were willing to do whatever it took, no matter how long it took, no matter how many times they failed to achieve their goals and quite frankly I commend them for it. Unlike those at the bottom who complain that “ewww, that’s immoral, ewww that’s so rude” and never achieve much of anything in their lives they didn’t tie their hands and feet together with nonsensical, bullshit, made up rules of what one is and is not allowed to do, think or feel with or about the resources they have.
If people really do believe the world is broken then the owness is 100% on them to fix it.
feelings lead to opinions
opinions lead to morals
morals lead to traditions
traditions lead to laws
laws lead to facts
facts lead to the dark side
his is not to say that feelings are bad, it is to say that they have their place and objective reality is not it. After all, the only reason anyone does anything is because they want to. No further justification is needed or even possible.
as for what I do to make the world better? I work on a therapy to heal my eyes from their X-linke Retinitus Pigmentosa. An allegedly incurable genetic disorder. I figured that living blind sounded like bullshit so I’ve devoted myself to finding some way, regardless of how crazy or unconventioal, to cure it and beyond. And I’m proud to say that, although it’s nowhere near completion, it’s proven it’s worth. I got told so much through my life, directly and indirectly, that the body is something you have no control of nor any ability to gaain control of no matter how hard you try or how long you practice. I wanted to put that to the test and so far I’ve won. Literally at this stage the only thing holding me back is that my body doesn’t perceive my eyes as being injured and since I’ve lived with it for so long I have no proper reference to show my body what it “should” be. But I’m working on that and as far as I or my partner can tell it’s just a matter of time till I crack it. I hope we’re both right.
Afterwards, once I can demonstrate that it actually works, I want to teach the method to others because it has a very wide range of uses beyond this. Then I’ll be able to turn around and say “A blind man did it, so what the fuck could your excuse possibly be?” Which will be very satisfying.
Note to self, editing time is limited, spellcheck before posting.
couldnt disagree more with your odd and weirdly cold evaluation of the world. it sounds like you are trying to hit out at someone for something in your past, please dont put that onto other people. you might want to look up the definition of corruption while youre at it.
People like the Rockefellers have earned their place at the top. They were willing to do whatever it took, no matter how long it took, no matter how many times they failed to achieve their goals and quite frankly I commend them for it.
Yes, there is no substitute for hard work and desire, but a line from the Everlast song “What Its Like” comes to mind: “You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start”
can you block people on here ? lulz
Clever comment lulz
wish i could say the same for you.
As part of my blog on Penang I write a monthly series entitled:
“Growing stuff on hot concrete – Gardening in tropical Penang – what’s growing in (December).
https://tropicalexpat.wordpress.com/category/permaculture-gardening/
I document my partly successful attempts to grow things, mostly on concrete, near the sea, in the tropics. It is much harder than growing food in more temperate zones, and neither local nurseries or online resources have been much help. This may be of help if you have similar circumstances.
I don’t know what kind, if any, predatory birds you get there but man if one came to your area it would get rid of most of the squirrel and rat problems very quick. as for teh ants and meal bugs, although this might be an unfeasible solution in your circumstances it may pay to plant things in raised boxes off of the ground. I don’t know how much soil a papaya tree or passion fruit needs but if you can raise them off the ground it would make it way easier to control ants and the like getting up the tree. You could bait near the box with something that the eants would find even better than the trees and maybe coat the box in something sticky that would hinder them crawling up. It might help keep them collected in a smaller area and make them easier to deal with before they even get up the tree. It’s the way to deal with gophers in Canada anyways. I know you tried growing some in pots though.
The same may go for the squirrels and rats. if they have easier access to food than what’s on your tree they would probably go for that instead of your fruits. Because why waste the energy if they don’t have to, right? Exactly what that would be or how you would do it I don’t know but it’s just a thought. A predator in the neighborhood would probably help even more. Hope it helps.
Thanks for your tips. I actually do those things, except for the predatory birds – which I see flying around but I don’t notice them swooping on squirrels.
Mike Adams on http://foodrising.org/ seems to have a new idea on easily growing food, and I am looking forward to what he comes up with.
To be as powerful as the Rockefellers and do what they did to the petrochemical pharmaceutical and medical industries you most probably need a savvy mix of hard work, arrogance, flexible morals and healthy lack of scruples (Ludlow massacre, driving smaller companies out of business through devious, non-“fairplay” means, demonizing non-allopathic thérapies etc…
But if we subscribe to the addage “Alls fair in love and war” than massacres to reach the top are no problem at all.
However, I, unlike Richard Grove am an Ayn Rand fan and believe her message was usurped and misrepresented (and that she even misspoke herself when commenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (though she preceded her much sollicited comments on the subject with “we don’t really know what’s happening”) .
Her message applied to folks who did not possess such flexible morals and astonishingly cynical interpretation of “protestant” values.
This from the dubious source “SourceWatch”:
“…Eliminating competitors to drug based paradigm
In his 1994 book, The Assault on Medical Freedom, author P. Joseph Lisa gained access to secret files in the AMA’s Chicago Department of investigation under the guise of collecting information to expose “mental health quackery.” In the process, he uncovered hundreds of AMA photocopies of memos, minutes and other documents. In a subsequent ten year investigation, he found little evidence of “quackery” and much evidence of an organized propaganda campaign to discredit alternative medicine and foreign drugs. The birth of the AMA in 1847 launched an organized push for a “totalitarian medical pharmaceutical police state”. Funded by the drug industry, a single, medical monopoly was established using the insurance industry, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Internal Revenue Service (IRC), the U.S. Postal Service and other state and federal agencies. From the onset, the AMA is characterized as a greed motivated trade union, eliminating competitors to its own financial and political interests…
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Medical_Association
Then there’s Ida Tarbell…
Er… can’t find the “edit” button,
but just to add that Ayn Rand from my point of view has a very empowering “love yourself and just go for it” message that does not preclude loving others and exercising morals. On the contrary, her principles are based on the idea that human creation and creativity are fundamentally “Good” with a capital G and that hindering, cynically exploiting or absconding with such creativity and its fruit is Evil.
and that Rockefeller did not just impact the petrochemical, pharmaceutical and medical industries but as a dynasty they’ve gone much much further. now back into the hamster wheel with me…
I would agree that moral flexibility but not complete moral abandonment is important. My personal issue with the alternative movement as a whole is this apparent moral and/or intellectual high horse they have. This imaginary thing that they seem to believe makes them somehow better than both the “sheeple” in intellect and sometimes morals and “The Elites” in morals and sometimes intellect.
One of my few criticisms of some of James’ guests and occasionally James himself is that even they forget it. As a specific example, the Ebenezer Scrooge FLNO where the guy talking about libertarianism was like “yeah this isn’t a comprehensive moral structure it’s just a legal one”. Yeah, those are the same things. You’ve literally said the equivalent of “Hey this isn’t red paint it’s super ultra deluxe Libertarian brand red paint made with 20% more Freedomate.”
The reason historians can use laws to determine what the cultural values of the times were is because no one enforces a law that they think is stupid. I.e., they’re just opinions, nothing more. Here’s a list of crazy laws no one cares about anymore as an example where many more exist:
http://facts.randomhistory.com/crazy-laws.html
As a result all this so called “legal corruption” should come as no surprise to anyone either. Hence why corruption doesn’t exist.
Another example came from either a podcast about bitcoin or anarchism, I do not remember specifically which, where at the end of the podcast James’ and the guy (possibly first name Andrew) debate about what people can and cannot own with James cornering him by asking “A river?” as in can someone own a river. The guy sputtered a bit and said of course not in my opinion to not appear “immoral”. But in the real world yes, they can own it, if they can maintain exclusive access to that river either by building a wall around it, patrolling it with a gun and defending it from all outsiders, etc, then they effectively own that river or a section of it. Ownership is determined solely by access. A person who has physical or otherwise direct operational access to a resource to gain its benefits owns it, a person who does not have access to that same resource does not own it. It’s that simple and more importantly it’s what matters most when you have a goal like changing the world. Anyone who’s played any real time strategy game can tell you this.
Anyone who’s wondering why Agenda 21 is so heavily focused on control of resources should know by now that this is why. Resources are all that matter. They’re all that has ever or will ever matter. Everything else is superfluous emotional nonsense that doesn’t get you anywhere. But it certainly helps if your opponents believe otherwise.
I’m not saying this to be mean I’m saying it because I want people to do better. I want the movement to succeed. And it can’t do that in it’s current state although it is admittedly getting better. James’ refocusing of effort from talking about the problems to working on the solutions is nothing but commendable. The same can be said for many of the examples shown in this podcast. Especially the LA Fruit Forest. It doesn’t matter if it’s baby steps. Success is just a result, it’s the effort that really matters. That’s why despite knowing that this essay and the previous one may do nothing and in fact somewhat goes against my stance that “waking people up is useless” I will put the effort in anyways because at the end of the day I just want to and I don’t know for sure what will come of it until I try.
Good and evil don’t exist, they’re just a matter of opinion. and what I see happen with this high horse phenomenon is they become either so unwilling to do what it takes to win that they end up losing while simultaneously believing they’re so much better than their enemy despite changing nothing. Or they become so obsessed with how “evil” the enemy is that they become worse than them. Case and point are the “social justice warriors” of Tumblr and beyond.
There is an entire subreddit dedicated to cataloguing their ridiculousness:
http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/new/
I wanna see the alternative movement replace the current culture but not if it’s only going to put in place another set of emotionally charged maniacs who will start killing people over differences of opinion because they’re too stupid to realize that trying to force everyone to agree with them doesn’t work and have enough power that they don’t need to care anyways.
At the end of the day this all boils down to a game of Starcraft or Command and Conquer or equivalent. There are resources, units gather them, buildings get built that build other, more powerful units. The aim of the game is to wipe out the enemy or at the very least survive as long as possible until they give up.
The alternative movement is in one of those positions where its opponents own the rest of the map while they’re stuck turtling in a tiny corner because they failed to expand early. They do not have the resources to waste on fluffy duffy, luvvy wuvvy, goodwill missions let alone the resources to spend repeatedly badgering people about how wrong they are and how right we are about how evil our enemies are. If they really care, if they really want to succeed then they need to put aside this childish nonsense morality bullshit and focus on building up their supply lines. Which yes, does including occasionally helping people out so that they start to like this side better than the other side and are more willing and able to convert. but only if you have enough surplus resources to cover that. They can wax poetic about whether or not it’s “fair” that force equals mass times acceleration and if enough force is put on an area of the human body it stops functioning later.
The only reason the world is not literally run like a game of Starcraft is because the people at the top are smart enough to know that they are currently using borrowed power. As a result they use various forms of manipulation to keep people doing what they need for just long enough that they are able to build up and army of clones or robots or whatever that would make all of that fluff irrelevant.
The easiest way to do this as I have learned is to try to make people believe the exact opposite of what reality is. If reality is a completely neutral medium that is at best one expression of an infinity of possible mathematical ratios that we identify as “the laws of physics” and we just happen to be a part of it…. then the opposite is to either get people to believe that their feelings matter intimately to the “universe” or reward them when they act out in that way and that little rituals affect the world profoundly. Whether that universe is a god or a government or a king or a philosophy is irrelevant. It’s all just emotional fluff in the end.
If you can get someone to believe their feelings matter externally, you can make that person do whatever you want. As most peoples who watch James’ podcasts probably already know, that’s the only reason laws and the like exist. They’re little more than a necessary intermediary so that overly emotional people don’t realize that it’s just another round of Starcraft and they’re choosing to get curbstomped. Choosing to fight amongst each other over pointless bullshit like “bad words” and “who’s more of a victim” and anything else that boils down to bitchwhining that one’s opinion is not reality. This should not be news to anyone.
I believe that’s the end of this essay. It may be long and it may not change anything. but it was written anyways in the hopes that it may help someone somewhere. Now back to my own hamster wheel.
i think its best to get off your 10,000 ft high high horse if you want to talk about the ‘high horse phenomenon’ – ill leave it at that because this guff is spoiling my enjoyment of this website.
Terraset,
Upon debarking from this week’s hamster wheel I finally got to read your replies with great interest. In this world where teachers are fired for voicing “conspiracy theories” I enjoy having the feeling that someone is trying to offer the straight dope as his or her own subjective intellect and experience dictates it.
I suppose at this late hour you’ll never read this but if feelings don’t matter then I suppose nothing does…so I’ll write it all out anyway, because I feel like it.
Human beings have feelings because they have hormones and if they have hormones that create feelings it may very well be because it served or serves some vital role in survival. Perhaps, in light of the grand scheme of the universe they’ve become obsolete like some say tonsils or the appendix have.
The universal language of music also creates powerful feelings in a universe of objective reality.
Though we hear more about them clouding judgement, I’ve found that my feeings can be a very valuable complementary guide to my intellectual assessment of moments in reality. And of other people’s behavior. And of what will procure me pleasure in the future.
Whatever the case may be, feelings are human and they are what, along with spontaneity among other things, distinguish us, for the moment, from artificial intelligence, perhaps our greatest rival for continued existence on this planet. Humans can produce surprising and beautiful things when they are behaving in illogical, impulsive and spontaneous ways.
Michelangelo’s “God in the brain”, more commonly known as “the Creation of Adam” found on the Sistine chapel might exemplify this for some.
http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/essay_pdfs/MLJ1.pdf scroll down to “inner organs of the sistine chapel”.
Feelings are what help people value beauty. Feelings are what make it possible to be passionate and affectionate and enjoy things. Feelings are what help us want to learn and continue.
In fact, I’m sure that if feelings didn’t exist, the raison d’être of any intelligent life in the universe would be to invent them. Certainly in order to instrumentalize them for some. But meaning is everything. And without feelings, is there any?
Reminds me of that funny dumb film Warm Bodies. The difference between beings that live solely guided by appetite and beings with feelings. And the delicious moment when the not entirely dehumanized zombies recover their capacity for feelings… Though I realize Hollywood is not to be trusted…
Of course feelings, as is the case with religion, television, technology etc etc etc are instrumentalized by those in power to stay in power. What isn’t?
I believe the reaction to scientific knowledge takes the form of an ellipse – it leads us west, towards materialism, abandonning superstition and towards future liberating inventions and then boomerangs us back east, to spirituality and feelings when scientific discoveries lead to even more colossal and inspiring question marks.
Yes, justice and laws and a lot of other human “values” are human constructs and do not exist outside of human invention and existance.
Do you want to live in a world designed by people who’ve strategically resorted to creating and maintaining widespread suffering to accomplish their vision of paradise?
Perhaps your X-linke Retinitus Pigmentosa can serve as a metaphore. THE system run by, as James Corbett would say, “the powers that shouldn’t be”, like yours, your body, does not realize that it is blind. And so we must devote ourselves to finding some way, regardless of how crazy or unconventional, to cure it and beyond.
Without it sterile human immortality will crave death and extinction.
I sincerely hope you will soon be able to say “what the fuck is your excuse!?”
uh sin 6:21 of tumblr, REBLOG ! video failed to load…
PPS: There’s this great movie called “A simple plan” that through its portrayal of human nature might offer a somewhat distressing perspective to the Rockefeller debate.
Yeah PS for me too. in addition to tumblr in action here’s another hilarious example of what to expect from the disturbingly (indirectly) politically supported social justice warrior. This is what happens when people go all in thinking their feelings matter. A disturbing trend that I believe may be used at some point to make a modern day American Nazi party perhaps 5 – 20 years in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-e4PgiVfM
a social phenomenon to keep track of in my opinion.
just saw this: http://guardianlv.com/2013/11/kkk-member-walks-up-to-black-musician-in-bar-but-its-not-a-joke-and-what-happens-next-will-astound-you/
This is a great video James. Joel Salatin is inspirational, as are all the advocates of the RegenAg (Regenerative Agriculture) movement. Of all the ways we can disconnect with the system, taking control of our own food production, or at least some of it (it gets addictive once you start) is at the top of the list. We don’t need to beg someone in authority to change the system, we just need to leave it behind to wither and die. We have a quest on worldchanging.me called Growing Steady that encourages the first baby steps in leaving the industrial agriculture complex: http://worldchanging.me/education-and-culture/growing-steady/level-1
We hope more people will join in with this quest so we can help change people’s attitude to food production and create a new “normal”.
Guerilla Gardening is such a crappy title that I almost skipped this podcast!
So glad I didn’t, probably one of your best.
Ron Finley was hilarious and an inspiration, as was Joel Salatin. – Never heard of them before. I have googled them both, and will follow them with interest in future.
Great show James, a big problem effecting much of the western world… potentially death by insanity…
Guerrilla Gardening – a simple ‘solution’…
http://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes
http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/
Britain, like Japan used to be a nation of farmers and the post war years were all about sustainability… however today, we import more than we grow, and what is grown is largely exported or used for bio-fuels… insane.
Trouble is now @GruffDiver can’t so much as look at an apple without a cheesey (organic of course) grin appearing on his face… we’ll never hear the last of this!!
P
I’m entering my 3rd year of gardening, did it pretty classical the first 2 years, learnt a lot, but too much time for low harvest. Now I’m preparing the ground for permaculture (invented by a the japanese Masanobu Fukuoka, heard about him James?), it doesn’t require water nor much human intervention. Have to recreate a forest-like soil, it’s a lot of work at first, but after few years it’s supposed to find it own equilibrium, not even need to plant seeds. Here is the latest picture I have, I hope to be ready for spring 🙂 https://twitter.com/mammique/status/556063536707665921/photo/1
I’ll keep you posted on the result.
Camille.
seen this? http://www.ledauphine.com/france-monde/2015/01/16/une-enseignante-suspendue-pour-des-propos-complotistes-sur-les-attentats
Sadly there are dozens of news like that everyday in France since the 7th of January :-/ Mosques being attacked. People jailed for tweets, Dieudonné arrested (and guess what, the law permitting this has been passed in November, how convenient). Tough days to endure in front of us… :-/
I have spent several working holidays with people who have tree nurseries and gardens and are following the principles of permaculture. I would suggest you seek out and visit others yourself or at least successful organic gardeners and ask to get some soil from their plots to seed yours with the soil bacteria, rhizomes, micorrhiza, virus and phages that are responsible for their productivity. There is little doubt the success or lack thereof of soil to consistently produce good crops is entirely dependent on the thriving soil communities the eye will never see. Importing from those that are working well seems counter intuitive but could save you from years of poor results.
Thanks for the advise! 🙂
Hi James.
I took your advices, and visited the farmers market. Here are some photos on my site
http://www.alayham.com/node/3994
Unfortunately, I can’t find everything I need in the farmers market. Some fruits are imported from neighboring countries, so I still need to go the supermarket or to the central market to get them.
Hello Al Saleh!
I just wanted to say thank you for thelovelyBahrain photos. They’re gorgeous. They inspired me to do a micro crash course on your country. It was most provocative and I’ll be following events their more closely.
Good luck guerilla gardening!
Thanks for sharing that, Al Saleh. I’ve retweeted your post as well. Glad to see you getting involved and seeing what you can source locally. As I say, no one can make a 100% change overnight, but even changing our habits a little bit at a time is still making a difference.
Hi James,
Na interesting article covering the Indian Farmer suicides from another perspective.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/26/the-myth-of-indias-gm-genocide-genetically-modified-cotton-blamed-for-wave-of-farmer-suicides/
best,
Jason
“The National Post, in its article, “The myth of India’s ‘GM genocide’: Genetically modified cotton blamed for wave of farmer suicides,†… calls into question the corporately controlled spin being placed on the story of Indian farmer suicides:
BUT;
The credibility and objectivity of the “International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPR),†particularly in regards to the use of Bt cotton in India, is compromised by the fact that its donors list is dominated by organizations of which Monsanto and other GMO purveyors fund directly.
For example, the “Better Cotton Initiative†which funds the IFPR is in turn backed by big-agri giant Cargill. Another IFPR donor is Crop Life International, which in turn is funded by BASF, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, and others. The laundering of big-agri cash and support through proxy organizations to conceal their involvement only further raises suspicion regarding the integrity and veracity of the IFPR’s contradictory report – a report that just so happens to define reality in terms that suits big business.†(All emphases in the original)
https://followingworldchange.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/joseph-p-farrell-the-gmo-scrapbook-pushback-from-farmers-in-india-against-gmos-grows/
Also a very good summary concerning GMO’s in general.
I found the tone and information in this article a very pleasant read.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-gmo-controversy/
Our stab at self – sufficiency here in northern France
http://www.lapetitepigs.com/the-herb-garden.html
Awesome! Isn’t Brittany’s soil poluted by pigs BTW? That’s what I’ve heard.
Excellent stuff, daflammas! Keep up the great work.
Hi,
hope you don’t mind terribly me making a plug for a project I’ve been working on that works toward the guerrilla gardening theme.
https://roguesmedallion.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/food
This branch of the project encourages gardening at different levels, with the intention of increasing awareness of food issues via direct participation.
The 30-second version is you pick one of the three levels (bronze, silver, gold) and fulfill the requirements for that level, and then document (text and images) your efforts on your social media feeds and timelines, as well as placing the appropriate Medallion in a permanent place in your social media, so your viewers can see what efforts you’re taking to participate in actual solutions to some of the problems we currently face.
In this case, the bronze Medallion only requires growing something from seed, and then harvesting the seed and produce, and growing from the harvested seeds. The silver Medallion requires growing enough of a particular thing to supply your needs for a year. The Gold requires fulfilling the silver Medallion as well as participating in a farmer’s market.
The project includes other areas including sound money, debt, FOIA, Media, 3rd Parties and open source computing (via linux). I hope a few here will check it out. Thanks for reading.