by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Food prices are skyrocketing all across the globe, and there’s no end in sight. The United Nations says food inflation is currently at 30% a year, and the fast-eroding value of the dollar is causing food prices to appear even higher (in contrast to a weakening currency). As the dollar drops in value due to runaway money printing at the Federal Reserve, the cost to import foods from other nations looks to double in just the next two years — and possibly every two years thereafter.

That’s probably why investors around the globe are flocking to farmland as the new growth industry. “Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar,” reports Bloomberg magazine (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…). “A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.”

Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, “I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.” Read the complete Post.

Posted on Jul 15, 2011
By David Sirota

NOTE: I am convinced that government policies that favor junk food over fruits, vegetables, and plant based proteins, are immoral. They degrade human health and jeopardize wellness. Vandy

The easiest way to explain Gallup’s discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being “Whole Paycheck.” Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.

It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point’s carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile—if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard—that’s because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own. Read the complete Post.

By Rick Balfour

July 12, 2011

alr-land-access-report-draft-b2

This is a topic of great concern to groups of people now looking to relocate but need to do so in collective, cooperative manner, and not necessarily in ecovillage form, but as extended family or combination of relationships similar to one.

There are many examples but the illustrations communicate a need of bridging structures or designs reflecting social transitions ‘back to the land’.

This one is purposefully ‘more elegant’ to counter the notion that leaving the city as some sort of backward step.

As lands become more intensively farmed (and without oil/tractors), the ratio of land and people in this and homestead models might rise to 1 person per acre or more.

Rick
oldcityfoundation@telus.net
www.plancanada.com
B&A Strategic Planning

Announcing a NEW BOOK from Balfour and Associates

SSP: Civil Defense Manual for Cultural Sustainability

This book gives in depth information about strategic sustainable planning from city planners and architects. It discusses peak oil and ways to address the end of cheap energy. It shows how patterns of community must change to allow for green corridors and food production. This manual is a guide to the essential transformation of our cities and suburban communities to sustainable, livable, self-reliance.

You can order a hard copy from oldcityfoundation@telus.net. The current edition, 200 pages in colour, is $35.00.

A pdf can be downloaded from www.plancanada.com for $10. using PayPal.

March 18, 2011

Instructions for saving our butts in a Post Oil low energy future.

Co-written by VPOE Richard Balfour and Eileen Keenan
Cost $10.00 for full color pdf downloadable file or $35.00 for a hardcover edition.

Want one? Click here to go to Plan Canadahttp://plancanada.com/

While focused on Vancouver as an example this is about global impacts on any city or culture from peak oil and climate change, and in an effort to deal with cultural adaption, not cultural melt down.
• Peak Oil
• Sustainability Workshops
• Canadian Institute of Planners
• Narrow Streets and Houses
• City Lands opportunities
• Farmland
• Miscellaneous – you won’t believe the topics covered in this section
• Links

For agreements for multiple use for education uses, please contact oldcityfoundation@telus.net.

Thanks to Charles Dobson in help making this alternate access available.
Richard Balfour and Eileen Keenan

Richard Balfour Architect & Co.
Balfour & Associates • Strategic Planning
Vancouver  6047310206
balfourarch@telus.net
www.plancanada.com

UN food price index rises for sixth month in a row to highest since records began in 199

World food prices enter ‘danger territory’ to reach record high

UN food price index rises for sixth month in a row to highest since records began in 1990

Soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed drove world food prices to a record in December, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world, and prompting warnings of prices being in “danger territory”.

An index compiled monthly by the United Nations surpassed its previous monthly high – June 2008 – in December to reach the highest level since records began in 1990. Published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the index tracks the prices of a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, and has risen for six consecutive months. Read the complete Post.

Fri – Sat October 15 – 16

from 9 am – 5 pm

Langara College, 100 West 49 Avenue, Vancouver

Co-sponsored by Langara College Continuing Studies and Village Vancouver

Join leaders of the transition movement in Vancouver for a 2-day workshop and dialogue introducing the principles, steps and lessons of the successful Transition Town model of local response to global challenges.

· What are the lessons for activists and concerned citizens?
· How can we increase resilience in every neighbourhood?
· What are the ways we might collaborate to get the impacts that are needed? Read the complete Post.

R A Leng
Emeritus Professor, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
rleng@ozemail.com.au

Abstract

The world appears to be at a most critical period in recent history, a financial crisis precipitated by simultaneous and interrelated/ interactive events including Peak Oil (the end of inexpensive energy),other global resource depletion and climate change all of which are undermining food security particularly in developing countries. There is an urgent need to respond to these challenges in order to produce and deliver food to maintain the present world population, let alone the increased population predicted by 2030 of 8-10 billion people..

The primary underlying cause of world recession appears to be depletion in fossil fuel energy availability. The world has been using more fossil energy then is being discovered and it appears that the reserves of energy that can be cheaply mined are now at peak production (half these resources have been combusted). As oil reserves are depleted, prices will rise continuously with increasing scarcity and the extra demand now coming through the increased wealth in many emerging economies.

Nations have to prepare for a significant rate of depletion of oil reserves and large increases in costs of essentials relative to peoples purchasing power. World population expansion has been promoted by the availability of inexpensive oil, which has supported a “Green Revolution” by providing inexpensive inputs including fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, traction power( lowering the need for labour and reducing the numbers of people in farming) and in places irrigation water. Inexpensive oil allowed food to be produced cheaply but this will change greatly as oil prices rise creating the potential for major disruptions in food availability and even famine. Failure to deal with increasing demand for oil, rising world temperature, failing water availability ( from snow melt, river flows and depleting aquifers) and reduced crop land fertility and availability through erosion, pollution, sea level rise may cause a slump in food production leading to widespread world famine Read the complete Post.

By George Monbiot
Posted on September 8, 2010, Printed on September 8, 2010

This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case.

In the Guardian in 2002 I discussed the sharp rise in the number of the world’s livestock, and the connection between their consumption of grain and human malnutrition. After reviewing the figures,p I concluded that veganism “is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world’s most urgent social justice issue”. I still believe that the diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock is iniquitous and grotesque. So does the book I’m about to discuss. I no longer believe that the only ethical response is to stop eating meat. Read the complete Post.

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