Processed Food
October 15, 2020
Vertical Farming
October 30, 2020
Food Chain Radio Show #1251
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Return to the Small Farm
Guest: Chris Smaje, Author, A Small Farm Future
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – MetroFarm – The Guide to Growing for Profit In or Near the City – Small Farms
We have cooked up some very confusing times for our world.
We have mixed up some nasty-smelling politics with a viral pandemic; thrown in a healthy portion of economic collapse, added a whole bunch of racial and religious animosities, mixed them up with wildfires and hurricanes, and then we threw the mix into the oven to bake through the most significant election in American history.
Give us a break! There must be some way of finding our way back to sanity.
Here’s a suggestion. What if we re-imagine the small farm– that home of Jeffersonian democracy that fueled the ethos for our nation-building forebears. That place where the individual pits his wits against man and nature and takes responsibility for his or her own fate.
And so we ask:
Leave a comment below: Can small farms help cure the madness of our world?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
2 Comments
oui, les petites fermes guériront , en Afrique surtout le modele agricole asiatique doit etre copié en lieu et place du modele occidental;
meme en France la production agricole en circuit court permettait de créer 100 000 Emplois
In Richmond BC we are counting on the small farm to provide much of the small fruit and vegetables for urban populations. Richmond Council has partnered with Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Richmond has 136 acres of “park” land near downtown Richmond. 80 acres will be preserved as peat bog. The rest will be farmed, with trails around and through the site. 300 allotment gardens are planned. KPU has a “Farm School” on 20 acres which will be expanded to 40 acres, plus an orchard, Farmers Market and other farm uses. Graduates from the Farm School rent “incubator Farms” on other land owned by the City and farm under KPU guidance. Then a group. “The Young Agrarians” helps find them land to lease long term from the many unfarmed properties in the region. Our own farm is composed of two small farms, one, our older son, producing beef and pork, and the other my wife, myself and younger son producing eggs, seeds, bedding plants and some beef. We direct market beef and pork on the internet and sell seeds, bedding plants and eggs at the farm gate using the honour system. Since we started direct marketing it’s the first time we have made money in decades.