Agriculture, Northland Sheep Dairy

Visioning County Food Production – Part Five

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Part Five: Peri-urban Agriculture

This series of articles is an exploration of designs for agriculture in Tompkins County to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. In earlier parts of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design; addressed the [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part Six

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Part Six: Rural Agriculture
This series of articles is an exploration of designs for agriculture in Tompkins County to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. In earlier parts of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design; addressed the key [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part Four

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Urban Agriculture

This series of articles is an exploration of designs for agriculture in Tompkins County to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. In earlier parts of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design, addressed the key [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part Three

Monday, March 8th, 2010

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Seeing County Food Production as an Integrated Whole
In Part One of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design for growers to follow if agriculture is to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. I said that providing [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part Two

Monday, February 15th, 2010

General Problem Areas in Sustainable Agricultural Design
In Part One of this series, I noted that providing for the local food needs of urban populations requires a design that integrates three overlapping categories of production systems: urban agriculture systems (many small islands of gardening in the city center), peri-urban agriculture (larger production areas on the immediate [...]

Visioning County Food Production – Part One

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Visioning County Food Production
by Karl North
“Because energies and monies for research, development, and thinking are abundant only during growth and not during energy leveling or decline, there is a great danger that means for developing the steady state will not be ready when they are needed, which may be no more than 5 years away [...]

A sustainable agriculture research and education agenda to address a gathering crisis

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

A Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Agenda to Address a Gathering Crisis
Karl North 2002
The Crisis, in its multidimensionality, with likely multiplier effects across its elements:

Exponentially rising energy costs for coming decades as currently foreseeable alternative energy technologies fail to compensate for the end of cheap oil;
Gradual loss of most of the energy-intensive inputs that currently [...]

How Does This Happen?

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

How does this happen?

Abandoned Farmstead – Andalucia, Spain
How does this happen?

Healthy Farmstead – Freetown, New York, USA

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