Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on January 1, 2024 | 99 Comments
A brief post today to wish Small Farm Future readers a happy new year and to give a preview of plans for this blog in 2024.
In the coming week, I’ll be at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, joining a panel with Lord Deben, chair of the Climate Change Committee, Kyle Lischak of Client Earth and the inimitable Rosie Boycott to discuss the role of agroecological farming in the transition to net zero. So … should you accept this assignment, you have roughly one day to get back to me with your suggestions for what I should say. If you’re at the conference and would like to say hello, do get in touch via the contact form.
I’ll also be doing an interview with writer and Oxford Real Farming Conference co-founder Colin Tudge, which hopefully will make it out onto the airwaves sometime soon. I’m lined up to do a few festival talks and podcasts in the coming year too, so watch this space for more info on those. Here’s one I did at the end of last year with Josh and Jason on the Doomer Optimist podcast.
I have some family and offline stuff to sort out for a few weeks after the Real Farming Conference. Hopefully I’ll start posting new material again here towards the end of the month or the beginning of February, and will continue in that vein through the year, albeit probably at a lower rate than was the case when this blog was in its ardent youth.
I’m planning to start winding down my engagements around my 2023 book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future soon, and turn to a new book project. Saying NO… has probably achieved about as much as could reasonably be expected of it under the circumstances. I doubt it’s changed the minds of many among the ecomodernist inclined, but I know for sure that it’s changed some people’s minds and it’s helped a few others steer a path through the fog of hype about farm-free business as usual and manufactured food. So I think I have to be satisfied with that. A certain amount of bluster and ridicule has come my way in response to the book, but I haven’t come across much serious empirical or analytical critique. As I see it, the book’s arguments have stood up pretty well so far.
There are a few issues raised in it, or that other people have raised in respect of it, that nevertheless seem worth exploring in more detail, so I’m still planning to write a short blog cycle about some of these – including energy futures, the possibilities for agrarian localism to feed people, and the nature of global hunger. More on those soon, I hope.
Meanwhile, Steve L has been keeping an eye on recent news from the alt-protein industry – see his useful comments on this blog starting here. I was particularly interested in the report of a former bacterial protein executive now involved in a new food-tech venture based around … beans. Seems like a straw in the wind. Given the energetics, I don’t think it’s too wild a punt to suggest that food in the future will remain overwhelmingly a product of farmed soil. Steve’s reports suggest that manufactured protein ventures seem to be struggling to attract funding, I suspect for rather obvious reasons from the point of view of people risking their own money (the big push for government investment is no surprise in this context). One way or another, bacterial protein powder is already beginning to look like yesterday’s fad. But I daresay it’ll take a few more years for the bubble to burst, by which time some new saviour technology will doubtless be vacuuming up attention.
I believe the real work of regenesis lies elsewhere, mainly in the sphere of politics, and that’s what I want to turn my attention to in future writing. I’ll say more about that once I’ve completed the present blog cycle.
A couple of proposed innovations on this blog to close with for now – I’d welcome any comments.
First, it’s been suggested to me that I might have periodic ‘open house’ posts, where I leave it to readers to suggest topics of current or general interest they’d like to discuss with me and other commenters on the site. Any thoughts? I might find myself resorting to it to give myself a break from writing blog posts, so I’m personally a fan…
Second, I thought I might put at the bottom of some posts, or maybe every post, my current reading matter. This is something Brian Miller does on his blog, which I like. I’ve resisted doing it partly because it sometimes takes me an embarrassingly long time to get through a single book. But these days I usually find myself reading several books at once over different timeframes. Listing them could be a point of interest for the blog, while also encouraging me to keep up with my schedule. So as a trial let me begin with a list of what I’ve been leafing through over the holiday period, listed in order of progress made so far:
Amitav Ghosh The Nutmeg’s Curse
Taras Grescoe The Lost Supper
Neil Price The Children of Ash & Elm
John Hoffman Sovereignty
Philip Loring Finding Our Niche
Robin Noble Under the Radiant Hill
Stephen Moss Ten Birds That Changed the World
Helena Norberg-Hodge et al Life After Progress
One thing that leaps out at me from that list is that it’s mostly white and male. Perhaps another useful function of public pronouncement is to improve the diversity in my reading matter. So … let me know what you think of this idea, or indeed your book recommendations.
Happy new year, and hopefully see you here again soon.
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https://slaynews.com/news/bill-gates-lab-grown-meat-exposed-really-gruesome/
Interesting links as well .
An act of curiosity and a gift of service…
Amitav Ghosh The Nutmeg’s Curse – https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/86538513
Taras Grescoe The Lost Supper – https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/86538513
Neil Price The Children of Ash & Elm – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43305488
John Hoffman Sovereignty – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3770181
Philip Loring Finding Our Niche – https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53279946-finding-our-niche
Robin Noble Under the Radiant Hill – https://birlinn.co.uk/product/under-the-radiant-hill/
Stephen Moss Ten Birds That Changed the World – https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61286570#CommunityReviews
Helena Norberg-Hodge et al Life After Progress – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75479979
@James
In a similar vein, you might enjoy something from this series of essays (one at the bottom ponders the question ‘Is Public Philosophy Good?’)
https://thepointmag.com/author/acallard/
Thanks Simon.
I disagree with the overwhelming majority of academic philosophers on the matter of metaphilosophy. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphilosophy — I call my own metaphilosophy the “metaphilosophy of aptness”. Aptness has a number of synonyms, and is a complex concept.
Here’s part of how I described aptness of this sort in a recently published article.:
“Dictionary.com defines apt as “suited to the purpose or occasion; appropriate.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines apt as “unusually fitted or qualified.” Etymonline defines apt as “suited, fitted, adapted, possessing the necessary qualities for the purpose” … “fit, suited, proper, appropriate.”
Just as words can be apt to our purposes, so can ideas, theories, concepts, methods, tools, technologies, behaviors, practices, institutions … and so much more. Each of these can also be inapt. They can be a slightly or a grossly bad fit.” — from “Cultural Obsolescence & Ontological Revolution (Part 2),” Resilience.org
Aptness, I suppose, really comes down to being in appropriate, skillful, intelligent and informed relationship with ourselves and others (of all species). Aptness in language, thought, perception, understanding, etc., serves this purpose.
All other metaphilosophies, if the do not subscribe to this sense of philosophy as a practice of aptness seem to me to be mistaken.
Public philosophy is utterly and completely necessary for aptness in our world, generally. The purpose of philosophy is neither entertainment nor leisure, nor mere pleasure … or any of the rest. It’s a necessary aspect of appropriate, healthy and wholesome relationship in this world. And all is relationship. There is nothing else.
Oh, there’s always something else 🙂
You come across as a man on a mission, and I think it’s quite something to have direction and a sense of a rudder.
I wasn’t even aware of the word metaphilosophy and all its (contested) shades of meaning.
I’m sometimes drawn to look into the ideas of philosophical thinkers, but when it gets to the point that the very terminology becomes contested, I tend to turn away from hairsplitting down a rabbit hole. But I think your aim is true in that all is relationship (the truth is between?). Today’s Meditation Tip seems obliquely apt too:
There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen! (Rumi)
Another tangent – you might like this, Diogenes – some thoughtful reading here:
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/sustainable-living/in-praise-of-repair-culture
And don’t miss this one – I loved it.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/sustainable-living/to-mend-a-farm
Happy New Year to you Chris. Thank you for the time you have shared with us and the world in 2023, and the years before. May 2024 and the years ahead be full of laughter and good food.
My vote for what you should say at a conference—
I love it when you stress the following argument (with my editorializing):
Our basic social setting is that we get to choose whatever future we want, and even if we don’t choose, things will turn out pretty awesome anyway.
This is looking at our situation as a problem that can be fixed, a question that has a solution.
But in fact our situation is a predicament that can only be responded to. There is no way out, just different ways of living with it.
So, critics might compare agroecology to industrial food production, but that is not useful because industrial food production is off the table. It is walking dead; still ambulatory, but just minutes or hours from the grave.
Your work accepts this basic reality, and asks how we might live with it.
So, it is not that we want to live in caves—but in some situations, living in caves is an excellent choice. In fact, in a heating world, more and more people will be moving underground, as many cultures have and do. Or, if you prefer, like Like Skywalker’s childhood home on Tattooine.
….
On another note, the biggest driver of lab food—and nomadic herding!—might be climate instability. That does not change any of the energetics, technical problems, or resource constraints that lab food faces, but agriculture is going to face substantial climate challenges.
So, to your list of energy futures, possibilities for agrarian localism, and the nature of global hunger, I would love to hear your thoughts on AMOC shutdown, drought, more frequent extreme weather, and other growing challenges for agriculture. That might be a good topic for an open post.
Anyhow, best wishes to you and Cordelia, and to all the commentariat.
Happy New Year – an open post would be great if it makes life easier for you – I’m amazed at the output you manage here Chris – and I barely keep up with the responses a lot of the time .
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the challenges facing agriculture as Ruben suggested – some of these might be a very big challenge for any sort of SFF. I’m also looking forward to your thoughts on the politics of all this – as has been raised many times here a SFF requires small farms and so access to land or the lack thereof often feels like the elephant in the room.
Best wishes to you all for 2024
Bruce
.. the thing that leaped out at me from the your reading list is that it’s all non-fiction 🙂
Not quite such a frivolous comment – I have found some personal value, of the imaginative kind, reading novels written at a lower-energy time – people banging around in the dark in the mid-nineteenth century, being careful with their candles, daylight being precious, how much effort goes into keeping a horse, etc etc etc. Until a few years ago I was also one of those people who basically never read any fiction.
I’m not going to be at the ORFC, though I have attended a couple of times, because of my job, so I hope it goes well for you. I’m not a major contributor to your comments but I do wish you all the very best for the New Year.
I agree — lots of nonfiction in that list…
Might I suggest “Notes from the Burning Age” by Claire North?
One topic that probably needs addressing is the generation gap, or gaps. As a Boomer, I find it difficult to grow enough for a winter [longer here at 53.5 degrees north in Canada], and would need the help of younger people to get that accomplished of course. But my generation, around for another few years at least, is best to be warehoused and out of sight and mind in our current “culture”, while the other generations who do have energy but little useful horticultural skill, nor home cooking skills, are busy with their ubiquitous phones, and other more useless skills. That generational gap{s} might just prove disastrous for my generation, but also for the next two who have so much to learn in order to survive the “great simplification” on our doorstep.
I certainly meet people younger than I am at the allotment, Bruce — and I’m an old-ish millennial, not a boomer. I think your characterisation of younger people as only being interested in their phones and only possessing useless skills is a bit unfair. I’m a better cook and a better gardener than either of my parents, and (I think) than my grandparents, though I daresay the latter had access to a much smaller range of ingredients than I do. When I think of gardeners I occasionally watch on YouTube (I don’t have a television at all), most of them are my age or younger. Of course, I’m writing this comment on my phone… but do you actually spend very much time with people outside of your generation? When I do this I find we have more in common than not.
Applying a class lens to some of the generation gap stuff can be instructive, but also misleading; while it is unlikely that I will ever own land (while my parents could have done, many times over), and the chances of my ever drawing a pension are miniscule, the issue isn’t that older generations as a whole are the owners of land/capital/whatever or even that they’ve pulled up the ladder behind them. Rather, they simply had the good fortune to live in an era of unprecedented Western wealth. “Boomers” who happened to be below a certain level of wealth, or who weren’t living in the West, had very different experiences than those we think of when we think of stereotypical Boomers.
I’m also not too worried about people lacking skill in growing and cooking food because growing food in a stable climate might turn out to be a different skillset than doing so in an unstable one. My parents didn’t garden much but my paternal grandparents did keep a vegetable garden, my first introduction to gardening and a way in which I still feel connected to them now. But I can remember my grandfather with a rain gauge, running the sprinkler until the veg had had their alloted number of inches per week… He didn’t compost anything, or even select plant varieties according to their suitability for his drought-prone Saskatchewan climate, or save rainwater. He grew up on a farm and moved to the city as many of his generation did, so he certainly wasn’t inexperienced, but when I think about his methods, they were quite extractive — perhaps because that was the prevailing wisdom of the time.
I irrigate by hand, capture rainwater from roofs, and focus on building soil that will actually hang onto the winter rainfall that we get in East London (summer can be pretty mixed, but we are in a rain shadow and I have now gardened through several summers of drought, as well as one with floods.) I like to think my grandfather would be proud of my work, but I’m not entirely certain he would have approved of all my methods.
Most baby boomers have smartphones now. They are after all the ones who came up with this (pretty useless) piece of technology. Lot more young people the days are not even using smartphones, social media, and the internet anymore because they have come to realise how pointless and a waste of time these technologies really are. Same could be said of all the farm machinery and agrochemicals that replace human labour and don’t have benefits other than increasing profit, at least in the short term.
I read that this is called ‘leapfrogging’, and that the Chinese largely leapfrogged laptops and went straight to the technology of smartphones instead.
The idea of individuals or, more so, of generations leapfrogging technologies to adopt either no alternative or an alternative (lower energy) technology sounds positive, and would do us all a favour. But it’s not always easy when technologies are foisted, e.g. it seems that bank accounts rely on the use of a mobile phone to access online, via one-time security codes. There may be ways out, but they’re not always easy to circumvent.
Hi Chris,
Have just picked up your book – A Small Farm Future, not that far into it, up to the 10 crisis. Have also seen you on Doomer Optimist. I subscribe to your ideas about the Small Farm Future and also actually want to be a part of the same mission (!). I work in IT currently to pay the bills but have always hankered after farming. One day.
I have also read George Monbiot’s books and his vision frankly terrifies me, as does Henry Dimbleby’s – his book starts out much the same, I agreed wholeheartedly in the initial chapters about problems with the food system, bad farming practices, current diets etc. etc. but then as with Monbiot, the solution must be radical, everywhere has to be re-wilded, no more meat, no living in the countryside.
Anyway, I’ll get to my point. I agree with the 10 crisis, except for Climate Change or more specifically that we as humans caused it or have any control over it. You mentioned in the book about the dust bowl in the US being caused by climatic extremes. So we acknowledge that the climate can change and can have extreme events – however, I very much doubt you can accept climate change happened in the 1930’s but that now, nearly 100 years later, it’s caused by human behaviour now? I can’t square this. My fear is that people who believe in farming and the consumption of meat by acknowledging net zero, climate change (which used to be called global warming before the currently moniker, and acid rain before that!) will be the very undoing of what they want to achieve. Monbiot and Dimbleby both want the complete and total destruction of agriculture and have no issue with the banning of meat by Government, because that’s what the people will ‘demand’. Which has all the hallmarks of a psyop – https://dougcasey.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-psyop
Climate Change in my opinion at least (though many others agree) is another psyop designed by the WEF/UN (and lets face it, central bankers and the elites) to achieve more control over the populace. It is also clearly a money maker. The erosion of soil, poor diets of the western world, hunger and pollution of water are all far more important and pressing issue than how much carbon is in the atmosphere. But you can’t make money off those things! No one seem to call anyone out on the hypocrisy of private jets going to WEF meet ups, and huge ships running diesel engines overnight while parked in Glasgow to accommodate delegates to COP. It’s like they are rubbing our faces in it and stating we are too stupid to see it. Or pushing the electric car agenda when the majority of electricity is made from fossil fuels.
I applaud your mission and like I say, want to contribute myself but my fear is sooner or later if we continue to acknowledge the net zero extremists then we will have no choice in the matter and farming as we know it will be extinct.
Perfect example – I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts:
https://slaynews.com/news/un-climate-summit-serves-gourmet-burgers-elites-demanding-public-banned-eating-meat/
Again, be careful what you wish for : )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xELwAzA07tA
Happy New Years to one and all.
I would be interested in seeing some more debate about land ownership covered in the previous blog.
It was all interesting stuff on rent and ownership etc.
The last comment that Andrew posted regarding Thomas Spence and parish land trusts sounded interesting.
I’m also interested in the influence of boredom in interpersonal relationships. Especially in a SFF.
Watched The Banshees of Inisherin over the Christmas break.
Once ones basic calorific/shelter/clothing requirements are met, how to stop the corrosive effects of boredom effecting isolated communities????!!!!!
My top fiction read would be
Barkskins by Annie Proulx.
(Perhaps white but not male.)
An intergenerational look at the colonisation of North America through two families. One narrative following the plight of a predominantly First Nation family. The other, a predominantly European family. All through the lens of the logging industry.
Gives a great sense of the shifting sands of time. Everything is in flux, always.
Made me realise that a SFF would be an ever changing thing.
Yikes ! Politics.
A time of change can certainly be a regenesis. I hope that you won’t lose track of the lessons learned from attempting a SFF if a modernist world. It is really hard to turn your back on the advantages that fossil energy brings. In today’s market climate giving up any of that puts you at a massive economic disadvantage. Add in a few years or drought or flooding, record heat, a pandemic, inflation, etc. and it can be very difficult to make a living. And as you probably know as well as anyone, there is more to making a living than feeding your family.
Having fought the good fight for 20 years you know much more about the challenges of the transition to a SFF than most. So. please think about what we can do to smooth the transition to the coming SFF. It is not going to be business as usual. They are making the situation worse by running the string out to the very end all so that a very few people can have a little bit more when they have so much more than enough. I don’t suppose they have any concept of enough. Which might be part of the problem.
Saying No was the stone in the sling that hit the giant of modernism squarely on the forehead. He hasn’t toppled over yet but there will always be a nagging doubt that there isn’t any way to carry on and never be inconvenienced by the real world. Well done (even if you did get a few details wrong).
There is a time when you are done plowing a field and there is no more to do. As much fun as it is, you have to quit.
All the best in the new year.
As a staunchly bottom-up thinker, I’d be curious to hear how your campers take to the idea of using a compost toilet (a critical component in any sustainable society, surely) as I’m pondering how one might work in a setting where food is being served. I’m personally sold on hand-built compost toilets, but the few I’ve visited, other than our own, were in no way conducive to living la vida loca (come to think of it, neither are ours!). I still mean to take Cordelia’s online course, and I recall you have constructed an interior compost toilet, which is something I’m considering too. I guess make it as attractive as possible is the approach to take, but I’d be interested to hear what you and any others have tried or experienced, particularly when it comes to that rare thing, the public compost WC.
My family were surprised recently to encounter a highway rest stop at the border of Maine and Massachusetts which was a large scale compost toilet facility. They had large signs and pamphlets to educate users about the benefits. Also signs saying “Do Not Drop your Phone into the Toilet — it cannot be retrieved!” The system was designed by Clivus Multrum who also have done public restrooms at the Cape Cod National Seashore, the University of Vermont and others. It wasn’t something you could build yourself, so maybe irrelevant to your question. I have experienced very up-scale phoenix compost toilets, also, and the key to odorlessness is always a little fan that keeps air moving down the chute. Obviously in a low energy, practical situation that wouldn’t be easy.
I’ve tried advocating for compost toilets locally with pretty much zero success. We even have a great local resource (Earl and Hilda of Cape Cod eco-toilets) but people aren’t open to it. https://capecodwave.com/a-sit-down-with-falmouths-toilet-lady/
I was amazed to find that Bill Gates is promoting compost toilets that people are suddenly excited to try…. of course overly complicated and made from expensive fancy parts: https://bcleanwater.org/living-lab-cape-cod-blog/cape-cod-community-college-to-install-eco-toilet-after-falmouth-considers-eco-toilets-6-24-22/
Interesting links. Thanks very much for that, Clara.
I confess I do consider most of the manufactured compost toilets too costly and complicated. Basically I don’t really want a plastic or porcelain toilet bowl to clean, when this part of the design can be eliminated by employing a long-dropping hole instead. But it’s a shame the enthusiasm and sound-mindedness of Earl and Hilda appears to have fallen on deaf ears in the intervening years in Cape Cod. As for the Gates Foundation’s ‘toilet of the future’ contest winner, I have to wonder how anyone with a brain can consider that a system involving a few pumps, a few tanks, an electrode reactor and a computerized control system that requires a separate room once it’s been shipped in from Shanghai, is an improvement on even the regular WC. Maybe the computerized component caught Bill’s eye? Or the idea you could mount the whole mini sewer behind glass for people to observe the spectacle? It’s amazing, as you say. But I think the idea of using a fan to help evacuate odour, which you mention, is probably one of the design elements that could be used in a low-energy situation, as fans tend to use very little power and therefore, potentially, a very little PV panel, perhaps.
For anyone interested in constructing toilets in low-low energy scenarios, I can highly recommend trying to find a copy of Winblad and Kilama’s book Sanitation Without Water.
The book Sanitation Without Water can be read online here or downloaded as a PDF file (download options are at the right side of the page):
https://archive.org/details/fa_Sanitation_Without_Water/page/n1/mode/2up
Wow! Thanks Steve (and the internet!). I paid an arm and a leg for that book 🙂
I have always used a humanure bokashi method. Like Joe Jenkins says, there is no such thing as a compost toilet. Humanure does not actually compost in a bucket and constantly requires emptying every few days. I kind of doubt that we will see people managing huge piles of humanure in the countryside. All I do is add humanure, food scraps, charcoal, wood chips, lactobacillus and then let it ferment for 2 weeks to kill harmful bacteria and then empty it onto the soil and top it off with some mulchy substance like leaves. It all gets reincorporated into the soil in a matter of days through biological agents, mainly earthworms. So what you are left with is basically an extremely nutrient dense vermicompost. Whereas with a humanure compost pile system a lot of the carbon and nutrients will offgas into the atmosphere. Joe Jenkins also adds urine to the pile which requires huge amounts of woody carbon material to counteract the nitrogen rich pile from becoming anaerobic and extremely stinky.
@Stevan
What about the intestinal worms???
Yes, what about them? They get annihilated via the fermentation process as I mentioned. Then through in situ vermicomposting the entire mixture is transformed completely.
@Stevan.
Interesting stuff. Not heard of your method before.
Is it something you have come up with yourself or is there a book out there you can recommend?
It sounds a much quicker process than composting.
Water manager Ralf Otterpohl from Hamburg University came up with this method after studying the terra preta soils in the Amazon. This terra preta sanitation is part of his wider integrated water management along with rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse with reedbeds, and the aforementioned dry toilet based on the principle of source separation and non-dilution. It is far more simple and hygienic than any so-called compost toilet or flush toilet for that matter. The only reason people aren’t using this method already is because they don’t know about it in my opinion. Important to compress the material down in the bucket with a brick and provide the food scraps or a sugar mixture as a food source so the anaerobic organisms can do their job. At the end of the fermentation you should see a large white mycelium on the surface. I was using this method in Australia at the time — fermentation may take slightly longer in more temperate climates. The receiving soil obviously needs to be biologically active for the material to be transformed back into soil. This is why I would do a traditional compost pile only once every few years or so to reintroduce huge amounts of the beneficial organisms, which is the main reason to make compost.
I really enjoyed the book Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud recently. Her writing is very impressive. This is just one example: https://humansandnature.org/citizens-reunited/
@Simon H
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume
Exactly, thanks Greg. These things have no right to be in a house. Down with the plume!
PS As SARS gets a mention on the toilet plume page, it strikes me that potentially pathogenic plumes can crop up in many places. I found the implications of this exploration of the existence of mRNA spike protein in exhaled ‘exosomes’ very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9jOxkZJQfg&ab_channel=Merogenomics
@John
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-worm-farmers-handbook/
There are other vermicomposting books out there, but I enjoyed this one.
I used to have a worm bin in the garden but now I’m not so sure anymore. Aren’t the earthworms in the soil doing the vermicomposting already?
@Matt
From memory, it’s a different type of worm that does the composting (shorter, thinner, redder than the common earthworm, as you find in the compost heap), though both produce the valuable worm casts. Hobbyists and businesses that deal with this ‘vermicompost’ – the desirable result of feeding and breeding worms in a worm bin or somesuch – then have the worm casts as a resource for mixing in potting compost, spreading around plants, selling at a premium, etc. Some even trade in worms. People who make a business of it usually have access to streams of suitable feed material (manure, cardboard, food scraps). Like a lot of things, to do it well requires practice, observation, experimentation and time.
Continuing along the scatological line –
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/finland-models-sustainable-toilets-that-use-less-water-create-compost
Excellent and inspirational article – thanks Greg.
@ Kathryn – thanks for your eloquent response – it’s easy for us all to slip into sloppy characterisations of others. And yes climate change may make large parts of our knowledge about things obsolete or at least less useful than we hoped – I can’t see much of a way to hedge against that – it was that sort of change that pushed Roger Hallam towards activism I believe.
@ John – I watched The Banshees of Inisherin over Christmas as well but hadn’t thought much about what it had to say about what life in a small land based community might be like – less anonymity and maybe in some ways less conformity. I don’t know. I doubt it’s something I shall have to worry about – I don’t think that sort of change is coming that fast – although it might – it’s been incredibly warm here through December and I read the global temperature anomaly was above 2 degrees Celsius for several days in November which doesn’t bode well given that the anomaly is usually greater during the northern hemisphere summer.
@Bruce.
My take on The Banshees of Inisherin was that he started cutting his fingers off as a result of boredom leading to depression and then onto mental health issues.
Got me thinking of the role/influence of boredom on interpersonal relationships and small village life, especially regarding a SFF.
In a SFF, I think communities will become more isolated. How this plays out on a psychological level is interesting.
I wouldn’t like to think that the people who live on my street, would be my main human/social interactions!!!!
There are two old ladies on our street. Turns out that they are sisters. Haven’t spoken to eachother for years. Had a falling out over a borrowed bicycle when their husbands were still alive.
Disagreements can fester into arguments that turn into feuds. I wonder if boredom has a role to play?
I haven’t seen that film but I’m pleased to see it starred a donkey.
Only person I heard of who cut a finger from her hand lived in London and was on crack, not that self-harm and mental illness is confined to any particular environment, though I’d wager modernity-in-your-face is the primary stressor.
I think the variety, busyness and ineluctable meaningfulness of a SFF will act as a fine antidote to depression and the like. That said, small communities of course have their drawbacks. One that comes to mind is that, if you have something it’d be better to get of your chest, confiding in one person might run a risk that the whole community eventually knows, maybe later that same day:) Might be better to just grow an ulcer. I guess this is where personal standing in the community comes in, and maybe living with anonymity over notoriety.
Joseph Jenkins is the go-to author for human waste recycling info. His methods work very well but do involve the regular light cleaning of 5 gallon plastic buckets. It’s much cheaper and much more foolproof than a composting toilet.
https://humanurehandbook.com/
My wife and I don’t follow his entire method yet, but have been collecting our urine separately for many years. Urine is where almost all excreted nitrogen ends up. Most readers here may know this already, but the nitrogen in one person’s urine is all the nitrogen needed to grow all that person’s food.
Where I live in the tropics, nitrogen is usually the limiting nutrient and we put our urine on everything from tree crops to root crops. Doing the same with fecal material involves much more care and effort so while our pee goes in a bucket, our relatively nitrogen-free feces now goes in the septic tank.
Here’s the key item needed for collecting urine (in addition to the plastic buckets), a snap-on toilet seat with lid:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000B13MT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The latest (fourth) edition of the Humanure Handbook can be downloaded here for free, with links to PDFs of each chapter at the bottom of the page:
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html
The third edition of the Humanure Handbook can be read online or downloaded in its entirety as one PDF here:
https://archive.org/details/compost_toilets_Humanure_Handbook/mode/2up
On composting toilets and the Joe Jenkins technique………
Does anyone know if it is beneficial/detrimental or neither to use biochar as a cover material for the bucket and/or compost heap?
I understand that carbon is a requirement for the composting process, but as biochar doesn’t really “break down”, Im not sure if it is appropriate or not?
I’ve made a biochar retort out of a couple of oil drums, that works really well. Its idiot proof (which is handy in my case) and produces a good amount of biochar per burn.
So, I’ve got access to lots of biochar that I could use as a cover material.
I did contact Joe Jenkins about biochar use in compost, but I think he got confused with ash. I did send a follow on email explaining the difference between biochar and ash, but he never reply 🙂
(I guess he knows a rabbit hole when he sees one!!)
Thanks for the comments. I’m just back from ORFC24 where I got into a public row with Lord Deben – more on that in due course. Time was I’d have ended up in the Tower, or worse, for such behaviour. As I’ve long said, progress is a fine thing…
On compost toilets, we haven’t encountered any major difficulties with public acceptance, although we go to some lengths to emphasize the rustic nature of our campsite. There’s a lot to be said for the Joe Jenkins method, especially for a small household of compost toilet aficionados, but we find the long drop source separating approach more practical for our purposes. Joe C’s approach makes sense, although faeces does make really great compost. Wouldn’t touch the Bill Gates approach with a barge pole, for various reasons. Though I’d caution Simon that while a bottom-up approach works with most things, you have to be a bit careful with it when it comes to compost toilets…
Gareth – thanks for commenting, and welcome. I’m not going to debate the reality of human-caused climate change, which I consider a nailed-on reality. That doesn’t mean there isn’t natural climate change or climate variability. And I agree with you that the powers that be will try to turn it to their advantage … but then they will do that with any eventuality – it’s what powers that be do. Still, I’m sure there’s much we can agree on around the case for a small farm future regardless of climate change. John Klar’s recent book is kind of interesting around that point.
Greg – thanks for your compliment and thoughtful comments … interested to hear more about the details I got wrong for future learning (we’ve already covered cows, I believe…) I dropped the David & Goliath analogy after upsetting Clem with it, but it has felt a bit like that to be honest. Alas as you say the giant hasn’t toppled over yet. I fear he’s turning into a zombie.
Regarding reading matter, yes it’s true I’m reading little fiction at the moment (I have phases…) Funnily enough, while most of the non-fiction I read seems to be written by white men, most of the fiction I read isn’t. Not sure why that is. Good point from Martin about lessons learned from past fiction concerning lower energy lives … but that risks more white men, albeit dead ones in this instance. Thanks also for the book recommendations.
Good point from John about an ever-changing small farm future. Hope to come back to that anon. Maybe it chimes with Ruben on AMOC shutdown & extreme weather. Seems like there’s some assent to my proposed innovations on the blog, so I’ll try to put that into practice, perhaps with a discussion along the lines Ruben suggested.
Tying some of these threads together, I’m utterly captivated at the moment by Price’s ‘The Children of Ash and Elm’ and hope to bring some of this into my writing soon, for reasons I’ll explain.
And thanks for the other comments… Back here anon
Chris, in reply to your comment on my comment, it’s unwise to routinely deprecate dead white men: you’ll be one yourself someday …
oh and:
while a bottom-up approach works with most things, you have to be a bit careful with it when it comes to compost toilets
is probably my best laugh of the week, even though it’s still only Monday.
I second that, made me laugh too.
Lord Deben is the Climate Guy right? Haha. Love it. See, I told you – dangerous ; )
Waste by Tristram Stuart might be a good book to add to your list, Chris. Has lots of good insights into the overall food system.
More books… Alex Stewart: Portrait of a Pioneer, by John Rice Irwin, is a fascinating slice of personal history from Appalachia around a century ago. A very memorable read from back when people wasted not.
“Animal-free dairy” on the rocks?
Maybe a newly-appointed CEO and new board members (as the company founders “step down” from leadership roles) will turn around a company “which is under pressure to deliver a return for investors who have pumped almost $840 million into the company to date.”
Maybe a different name for a genetically-engineered synthetic biology product (made mostly from sugar) will get more traction with consumers?
Out: “Animal-free dairy”
In: “Whey protein from fermentation”
Maybe the genetically-engineered synthetic biology protein will someday get beyond testing in various products and endure in the marketplace without getting discontinued or dropped by the food companies?
“The first products launched by multinationals utilizing Perfect Day’s whey protein include CO2COA animal-free dairy chocolate from Mars (now discontinued), Cowabunga animal-free beverages from Nestlé (tested in a handful of stores), and Bold Cultr animal-free cream cheese from General Mills (recently dropped). Starbucks has also tested animal-free milks but has not said anything publicly about their performance.”
https://agfundernews.com/perfect-day-finalizing-pre-series-e-round-of-up-to-90m-installs-tm-narayan-as-interim-ceo
Oh, but doesn’t “animal-free dairy” have a lower environmental impact (or smaller footprint) than the real dairy products?
A company-funded study says “yes” but a peer-reviewed study published in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment found that “The environmental impacts of microbially produced milk protein were of the same magnitude as for *extracted* dairy protein.”
Moreover, when the ‘microbially produced milk protein’ is compared directly to dairy products such as milk, yoghurt, and cheese, the study found that real cow’s milk dairy products would most likely have a *smaller* footprint!
Quote from the peer-reviewed study:
‘Milk protein at the dairy farm-gate vs. milk protein by cellular agriculture at the production facility gate… For many dairy products such as fluid milk, yoghurts and cheeses, it is reasonable to use raw milk as a raw material instead of extracted milk proteins. For these products and in countries with developed dairy chains, dairy proteins within the raw milk are likely to create a smaller footprint than the use of rBLG [the recombinant milk protein excreted by genetically-modified microbes in the ‘precision fermentation’ process] would create.’
Behm, K., Nappa, M., Aro, N. et al. Comparison of carbon footprint and water scarcity footprint of milk protein produced by cellular agriculture and the dairy industry. Int J Life Cycle Assess 27, 1017–1034 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-022-02087-0
I quite like this summary of our global predicament.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/death-cults-doomers-and-an-end-of?utm_medium=reader2
J A
You beat me to it. I was about to quote that link too. I also find Our Finite World an excellent blog. Caution, some folk who haven’t ‘woken up’ to what ‘COVID’ 2020-23 was about, or to the censorship of the MSM, may find some comments alarming. The blog owner, a former actuary, allows free speech, something governments don’t like at all although the US government is obliged under its first amendment to pay lip service to it … the UK government doesn’t even try.
I’m surprised it took Chris so long to figure out Gates. ‘Wouldn’t touch with a barge pole’ seemed far too gentle and mild, watching online documentaries on him in *2020*. Look up too the farmers’ protests in Germany and possibly other EU countries … the Netherlands had them earlier. This coercion is worldwide.
Brett Weinstein’s recent online interview with Tucker Carlson on the attempted ‘global health’ takeover is equally educative. Some people on here may have missed the 10-20 interviews / debates Weinstein did, starting in 2021. A clue, it’s not about our health. None of it ever was.
I rang in the New Year with a cold, which explains (this time) my tardy reply. Chris, I do love to see what others are reading. So, thanks for sharing that list. I look forward to exploring some of the titles, and seeing more in the future!
Cheers,
Brian
As for “open” posts, perhaps you could just set a “theme” for such a post once per month by some thoughs, ideas or open-ended questions. It will make it a lot easier to find those comments one liked than if all kinds of issues are raised in the same posts.
Chris,
Any podcast of the fisticuffs between you and Lord Deben ? If so, please post a link.
Seems odd that you still have Lords ( and Ladies ?) but, I guess, you have a king.
For Greg R and other non-uk readers: Deben isn’t a real lord in the sense of inherited title. He was appointed to the upper legislative chamber, which comes with the honorific title, as almost all politicians with the lord/lady title have been for some time now.
Thanks for the further comments. I’m short on time to respond just now but hope to come around to some of the issues raised.
Briefly, Gunnar’s suggestions about the open thread make sense, so I’ll aim to trial that soon. Greg, my panel with Lord Deben will probably be on the ORFC’s YouTube channel in due course, but I’ll write a blog post about it shortly. Martin is right that he’s not a ‘real’ lord, but even so I agree it’s odd that we still have lords & ladies, not to mention monarchs here. There’ll be more from me down the line about monarchs.
Regarding Martin’s point about deprecating dead white men … well, I consider self-deprecation a virtue, and when it comes to virtue there’s no time like the present. I imagine it’s harder to be self-deprecating when you’re dead.
John, thanks for the link to Our Finite World – interesting. Thinking I might write a post soon called ‘A cartography of the doomosphere’ to help me navigate through these confusing new political landscapes that are opening up.
And thanks also to Steve for continuing to track alt-protein developments. It’s starting to feel like my work in this sphere is already done…
Happy New Year Chris and my fellow small farm futurists!
We’d love to do a post on our Care Home Farm proposal Chris! It’d be great to get some feedback from the community on that.
We’ve homed in on ‘world building’ as a way through to the community self provisioning future we envision, which allies nicely with Ruben’s Skywalker house (anyone seen Andor?), and the non fiction bias in your reading – that the politics arises from an aesthetic and world we have to build and articulate through works; crafts and clothes and recipes.
We have really enjoyed the Bell in the Lake trilogy, which we are awaiting for the final installment!
it’s odd that we still have lords & ladies, not to mention monarchs here.
Alternatively: not odd at all that the mere titles survive, but rather a healthy connection with the past.
(I am attempting to pull your tail, I’ll admit. A spirit of new years contrarianism. I shall go back to not commenting).
Just to add – I don’t mind you tweaking my tail, Martin. Better than not commenting. But IMO the royal/aristocratic stuff isn’t a healthy connection with the past in Britain, but an unhealthy one. ‘What does a healthy connection with the past look like?’ – now that could be an interesting open thread topic!
John … I’d be interested to know what Joe Jenkins’ take on ash was, even if he got it mixed up with biochar. Also, I’m not sure that boredom is such a big deal in agrarian societies. It seems to me more like a construct of modernism. Whereas interpersonal rivalries are a big deal, I think, and need means of redress.
Joel, drop me a line about your proposal for a care home farm if you like. I’d be interested to feature it.
@Chris
My email conversation with Joe Jenkins went as follows……
Hi Joseph
Working my way through The Humanure Handbook. Really enjoying it
I appreciate that you are probably very busy but I’ve got a question regarding cover material for a compost toilet. Is it ok to use biochar as a cover material. Are there any drawbacks to using biochar? Is it detrimental to the composting process?
Been thinking of possible cover materials. I’m thinking of possible materials I can source myself. I’m making a biochar retort and am making biochar in my wood burning stove.
Sawdust, shavings, chippings I would need to source from someone else.
I would be grateful if you could drop me a quick reply outlining the pros and cons of biochar.
Regards
John Adams
———————————————-
Reply from Joe
You can’t use ashes, sand, lime, or dirt. It has to be a plant-derived material. You can look on page 215 of the 4th edition. If you do not have it; you can buy it or read it online for free, and it should answer all your questions.
———————————————-
Hi Joseph.
Thanks for getting back to me.
I’ve got a copy of the book.
I understand that ash is no good but biochar isn’t ash. It’s pure carbon (charcoal). I understand that carbon is good for the composting process (sawdust, wood shavings etc) and was wondering if biochar would be OK to use as a cover material?
Biochar isn’t mentioned in the book as far as I can see.
Regards
John Adams
His argument for not using ash (in the book), is that the microbes need carbon based material to feed on. Ash has no carbon in it, so should be put straight onto the veg patch and not in the compost.
My query was if biochar, (pure carbon) would be any good as a cover material. It’s carbon but in a form that doesn’t really break down, so not sure the microbes would be able to feed on it?
The guy in this video recommends using biochar (ground/powdered) for covering humanure, with 2 years allowed for composting:
https://biochar-us.org/presentation/biochar-and-humanure
@Steve L
Thanks for the link.
It’s just got me more confused though.
The guy in the video separates out the urine from the feces before composting.
Joe Jenkins says that it’s important that they stay together for the composting to work?????
What to do????
I really don’t understand why people are recommending the Joe Jenkins method on here. Mixing raw humanure together with urine and food scraps sounds pretty stinky to me. And unless you live next to a sawmill, where are you going to get a constant, year round supply of sawdust as the cover material?
@Linda
I’ve not tried the Joe Jenkins method (yet) but found the book really interesting.
He says there is no smell providing the cover material is adequate.
I agree that sawdust for a cover material may be hard to come by. Especially in a SFF.
There are some wood workshops local to me, where I can get sawdust but I would like to find an alternative I can generate myself if possible.
@John
I think biochar is probably easiest without power tools, or perhaps fallen leaves if you have a lot of trees (but you don’t want to rake up all your leaf litter, or you don’t get good mushrooms). Chaff from threshing grains also ought to work, or chopped up corn or sunflower stems… basically any plant material high in carbon that’s small and dry and can form a decent layer.
Whether it’s worth separating urine might well depend on your climate and how you store the materials. I am not composting human waste (other than peeing on the compost heaps sometimes), but I figure humanure is basically just composting where the results if you mess it up are more inconvenient and unpleasant to deal with. I know my big compost heaps at the allotment have a tendency to dry out if I don’t soak the woodchips before adding them, while the hot compost bin has the opposite problem — it seems like no matter how much carbon I add, it stays on the slightly-too-wet side of damp. I imagine that the urine separation question is similar.
So, Greg – and anyone else who might be interested – here’s my session with Lord Deben, along with Rosie Boycott & Kyle Lischak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezFwh2KraQI&list=PLNSHtMBQRdj842yU7QzI5Olcr8q_yy7Xo&index=31
It’s tempting to write a bit of context (aka excuses) around it, but I’ll refrain. Not sure I’m gonna watch it myself, but of course feel free to let me know how you thought I did.
Lord Debens mad! He’s gonna tell The government to pull their finger out and couldah shouldah he wouldha.
Congratulations on your enormous patience squashed between a Lord of the Manor with severe (and unconscionable) cognitive dissonance (public school brain washing?) and conscious corporate slickster with an eye on the philanthropy money. Your like the boy pointing out the empororer has no clothes and it is heartening to hear that part of most of the crowd get it. Well done, good job.
Shocking to think this Lord ran some big time climate thing for the government but is energy blind. Oh, no it isn’t.
This I think is my anthem from now on
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AYA_0R7Vw1s
Those kinds of forums are always difficult. Nobody gets enough time to go into any depth and the questions are usually not too hard. I think you did a fine job of presenting a realistic scenario of what the best case future looks like. Lord Debens did notice that you were getting all the applause.
He seems like a nice enough guy. Probably hasn’t thought through the energy and material ramifications of 3% growth for the next 30 years or what happens in cities if they have to function on 1/4 today’s amount of energy. Hopefully you have already sent Lord Debens a copy of Saying NO.
Hi Chris – in the paper this morning (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/15/why-europe-farmers-are-protesting) the following passage jumped out at me mentioning as it does ‘agrarian populism’:
“The Netherlands was a bit of a harbinger when it comes to these protests,” said Léonie de Jonge, a political scientist at the University of Groningen who studies the far right. “This is the new kind of agrarian populism popping up in these countries.”
Some of these protests have resulted from pesticide bans, restrictions on the (over) extraction of water from rivers and from attempts to reduce nitrogen emissions resulting from intensive livestock production (I think Gunnar has written about that). These protests also seem at times to have taken a turn towards forms of nationalism (blood & soil anyone) that have disturbing echoes in Europe. And they seem to have wider political support.
I find this rather depressing – that issues of food/land are re-emerging into our politics in a way that seems diametrically opposed to the sort of SFF agrarian localism/populism that Chris has been proposing.
My guess is that the political support is highly opportunistic – I’d suggest the farmers involved in these protests look at how small fishing boats were iconic (used) in the campaign for Brexit and then shafted shortly afterwards. And the protests themselves also seem blind to things like declining energy availability – the protests in Germany centre on the removal of fuel subsidies/tax breaks for the agricultural sector and the protests involve driving around in massive tractors blocking roads/slowing traffic – modern farming requires massive amounts of fossil energy and my guess is there’ll be a lot more of this sort of anger before there’s a real engagement with the issue of energy dependence and energy supply.
Anyway I thought if you were planning to write about the politics, energy futures, agrarian localism etc these movements seem to be touching on all these and I’d be interested on hearing your thoughts.
The worrying part about this is that the German government has offered no response other than farmers are fachist , no statement on how farmers are supposed to feed the population or how people are to feed themselves , this is a recipe for disaster / famine and hungry people loose all sense of humor .
When did government not taxing something become a subsidy ?
And as a by for the Europeans, Biden has ordered the limiting of how much LNG is sent to Europe .
What worries me most is that we are all meant to assume that every single farmer is some kind of amazing biological steward of the land. I wonder how many of these farmers have any basic, entry-level knowledge of biology, which surely should be a prerequisite before you have the right to make any kind of money from the earth. In the end it is still farmers themselves who are growing in monocultures and applying copious amounts of agrochemicals and not people in cities who are simply buying the products being made available to them, or politicians making the policies, whatever they are. Indonesia has a policy to stop cutting down the rainforest and yet they are still cutting it down.
Otherwise I really don’t understand where the huge differences in the quality of farmers are coming from… I have nothing against farmers earning a decent income/commanding higher food prices if they are actually real farmers providing good food to their town (and for themselves obviously) at a farmers market. But fossil fuels are not going to last forever and protesting against this geological reality just seems so pointless and like such a waste of energy, ironically enough.
The problem is that no farmers are making a good living. Very few, except for the largest ones, who excel at farming the government / subsidies. The regular guys believed that they were Feeding the World. Then a cheap food policy came along and Get Big or Get Out. By the time they realized that they had been played, it was too late. They were all in for a colonial system and they were the colonies.
The difference in quality is analogous to the difference between Movement Organics and Industrial Organic. 10,000 certified organic dairy cows in the desert ? Sure !
We are stuck with a very broken food system.
Well if anything small scale farming should be more profitable because you are not relying on expensive inputs such agrochemicals and heavy farm machinery, growing food using free sunlight for yourself in addition to everyone else, and selling at a slight premium. I for one know of several farmers who have made it work. It does however require some creativity as well as a reasonably educated populace in towns who understand the importance of good farming as an integral part of life in the biosphere and are willing to pay slightly more. That’s my take on the matter anyway.
When diesel gets too expensive to use along with pesticides( and herbicides and agro chemicals are getting there ) will everyone that ” moves back to the land” have a degree ? or even the slightest idea of how to grow their own food , between 1 & 3 % of the population actually do the farming , the rest sit on their shoulders , ( and are paid very poorly for their efforts ), give the average city dweller a piece of land a spade and seeds they will be starving in a couple of weeks .
No kidding. Even something so simple as a radish takes 3 weeks in good conditions.
Hi Chris,
I was thinking, perhaps a book like Urban Geography by Michael Pacione would be a good reference work to better sort through this issue of cities and how they are inextricably linked to the countryside? He has also written widely on rural geographies.
I’m giving very serious consideration to writing an article for Resilience.org on the topic of “little known food plants” which may be of importance in the near future due to the various changes occurring in our world, such as climate change, lowered energy availability and a need to re-localized and re-regionalize food production. This idea for an article was significantly inspired by Chris Smaje’s talk in the video he linked to above, but it’s just a topic of great interest to me generally, anyway.
I’m curious to know what food plants folks here might recommend to me for consideration in my article — of course, with a contextualization with place, climate, culture and situatedness. My article will be for a global audience, but will endeavor to weave the importance the particularities of place into it.
Hi James,
This book by well renowned plant botanist Joseph Simcox may be of interest to you. https://www.explorewithjoseph.com/into-food-space-10
Regards
Pat
Thanks Pat!
Hi James. This is another great book I just came across. I’m sure it would be useful and of interest as regards your groundbreaking research.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57845087-eating-to-extinction?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=02K9xPFOI0&rank=1
James – perennial veg and the like – you’ll like this (spotted it while listening to Chris’s talk):
https://incrediblevegetables.co.uk/perennial-vegetables-take-centre-stage-orfc-24/
Thanks Simon.
James, you might want to look into this: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11763/lost-crops-of-africa-volume-ii-vegetables
I don’t know of any vegetables that do better for us than potatoes, onions and okra here in Kansas.
And of course there is wheat…
But a relatively little-known fruit tree is the very best here: Jujube – Ziziphus jujuba.
You need 2 varieties for pollination, but there are no pest problems, the bloom time is late enough for late frosts, and even the hungry squirrels can’t eat all the fruit.
The only downside is that they send up thorny root suckers.
The tree has been cultivated for centuries in Asia, but not very well known in the West.
Most common varieties Li & Lang.
Good luck with your project.
This video was a bit of an eye opener for me!
Wonder what the implications will be for a SFF and cities in particular.
https://youtu.be/A6s8QlIGanA?si=Vr-l5XdUDpPyVsSD
Thanks for keeping the blog ticking along with your comments while I’ve been attending to things offline. I’m just beginning to surface now and hope to have some more material here soon.
I won’t try to catch up with all the comments, but I’ll try to take a look at various links & readings suggested – thank you. On Lord Deben, thanks for the supportive remarks. It’s odd that I’ve lately experienced two high profile men who I think understand pretty well the energy & climate difficulties we’re in scorning my arguments about deurbanization with misplaced criticisms of its supposed romanticism. Maybe a case of what Monbiot likes to call motivated reasoning.
On composting toilets, I agree on the case for separating liquids and solids – unless you own a sawmill.
Interesting debate with Andrew about property under my previous post. I hope to come back to that in due course.
Also, it’d be good to talk about agrarian populism in the context of current farmer protests like in Germany, as suggested by Bruce. Don’t let me forget!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_by_30
Worth a read , I bet here in the US they do not turn Martha’s vineyard into a No go zone , more likely to kick the indigenous off their reservations in the flyover central USA
An article about an new intentional community. Why they chose the desert, I don’t know.
https://www.businessinsider.com/off-grid-homesteading-community-riverbed-ranch-utah-doomsday-prepper-survivalist-2024-1
Over the last few days there are reports that uk , French , German Dutch , Italian, polish and Danish farmers are getting ready to use their muck spreaders to gain attention , a pile outside broadcasting house would hopefully get their attention .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qDmaYQh7r6Y
And farmers are now criminals according to the WEF .