Food

What’s the Big Idea? Markets

EVERY SUMMER, we have a small produce market in our neighbourhood. Volunteers run it oncea week. In the morning, they go to the regional farmers’ produce auction. In the afternoon, they set out the fruits and vegetables on temporary tables in front of the community centre, with handmade signs indicating […]

Eating Up

THE QUESTION made a great conversation starter on its own: Can a grand dinner party bringing together the right people spark a conversation that could change the world? Last November, World Accord International Development Agency in Waterloo, Ontario, decided to find out.

Carrot City book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture

Why is our food grown so far away from where we live? Why do we classify farms as rural and cities as urban? Carrot City dismantles the social constructs between these two halves of the same whole, and others: yards and gardens, industrial and agricultural practices, organic and conventional, producers […]

The Urban Food Revolution book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Urban Food Revolution

A great resource for understanding the possibilities of urban agriculture and international food security, Ladner situates food at the centre of many contemporary issues such as oil dependency, obesity, climate change and the loss of farmland. His argument is that by finding solutions to urban food issues, many of the […]

The Transition Companion book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Transition Companion

Being an environmentalist isn’t for sissies – the statistics are depressing and they turn people off, and the problems often seem to have no end. Anyone feeling this way should read The Transition Companion, which mixes knowledge, action and inspiration to address a range of areas that are central to […]

Urban Homesteading book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Urban Homesteading

Concerns for our unsustainable, fossil-fuelled lifestyle underlie Rachel Kaplan and K. Ruby Blume’s book, Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living. The book provides a colourful overview of what each of us can do to build a more self-sufficient future. It explains the principles of homesteading and permaculture, and provides a […]