THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take ?

Seeds of Death

The Truck Farmer

The Future of Food by Lily Films

SEEDING FEAR

Seeds of Death

Seeds of Death

Doctor Sex

seeds of death

story of the seed

Vandana Shiva (Hindi: वन्दना शिवा; b. November 5, 1952, Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India), is an Indian philosopher, environmental activist, author and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 1978 with the doctoral dissertation "Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory."

She is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the alter-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, as is evident from her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime) that draws upon India's Vedic heritage. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. (read more)

Farmageddon

genetic gamble

weeds

(watch the future of food)

Plant Of The Gods

Cannabis is indigenous to Central and South Asia. Evidence of the inhalation of cannabis smoke can be found in the 3rd millennium B.C., as indicated by charred cannabis seeds found in a ritual brazier at an ancient burial site in present day Romania. Cannabis is also known to have been used by the ancient Hindus and Nihang Sikhs of India and Nepal thousands of years ago. The herb was called ganjika in Sanskrit (ganja in modern Indic languages). The ancient drug soma, mentioned in the Vedas as a sacred intoxicating hallucinogen, was sometimes associated with cannabis.

Cannabis was also known to the ancient Assyrians, who discovered its psychoactive properties through the Aryans. Using it in some religious ceremonies, they called it qunubu (meaning "way to produce smoke"), a probable origin of the modern word "cannabis". Cannabis was also introduced by the Aryans to the Scythians and Thracians/Dacians, whose shamans (the kapnobatai—"those who walk on smoke/clouds") burned cannabis flowers to induce a state of trance. Members of the cult of Dionysus, believed to have originated in Thrace (Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey), are also thought to have inhaled cannabis smoke. In 2003, a leather basket filled with cannabis leaf fragments and seeds was found next to a 2,500- to 2,800-year-old mummified shaman in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China.

Cannabis has an ancient history of ritual use and is found in pharmacological cults around the world. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices like eating by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century B.C., confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus. One writer has claimed that cannabis was used as a religious sacrament by ancient Jews and early Christians due to the similarity between the Hebrew word "qannabbos" ("cannabis") and the Hebrew phrase "qené bósem" ("aromatic cane"). It was used by Muslims in various Sufi orders as early as the Mamluk period, for example by the Qalandars.

A study published in the South African Journal of Science showed that "pipes dug up from the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford upon Avon contain traces of cannabis." The chemical analysis was carried out after researchers hypothesized that the "noted weed" mentioned in Sonnet 76 and the "journey in my head" from Sonnet 27 could be references to cannabis and the use thereof.

Cannabis was criminalized in various countries beginning in the early 20th century. It was outlawed in South Africa in 1911, in Jamaica (then a British colony) in 1913, and in the United Kingdom and New Zealand in the 1920s. Canada criminalized marijuana in the Opium and Drug Act of 1923, before any reports of use of the drug in Canada. In 1925 a compromise was made at an international conference in Haag about the International Opium Convention that banned exportation of "Indian hemp" to countries that had prohibited its use, and requiring importing countries to issue certificates approving the importation and stating that the shipment was required "exclusively for medical or scientific purposes". It also required parties to "exercise an effective control of such a nature as to prevent the illicit international traffic in Indian hemp and especially in the resin". In the United States the first restrictions for sale of cannabis came in 1906 (in District of Columbia). The first federal law in the U.S. that in practice prohibited cannabis was the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. (read more)

(hemp - plant of the gods)

My Victory Garden

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. This made victory gardens become a part of daily life on the home front.

In March of 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack organized the National War Garden Commission and launched the war garden campaign. During World War I, food production had fallen dramatically, especially in Europe, where agricultural labor had been recruited into military service and remaining farms devastated by the conflict. Pack conceived the idea that the supply of food could be greatly increased without the use of land and manpower already engaged in agriculture, and without the significant use of transportation facilities needed for the war effort. The campaign promoted the cultivation of available private and public lands, resulting in over five million gardens and foodstuff production exceeding $1.2 billion by the end of the war.

It was emphasized to home front urbanites and suburbanites that the produce from their gardens would help to lower the price of vegetables needed by the US War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military: "Our food is fighting," one US poster read; in Britain the slogan "Dig for Victory" was ubiquitous.

Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor Roosevelt's institution of a Victory Garden on the White House grounds, fearing that such a movement would hurt the food industry, basic information about gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant Riverside were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

The Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay Fens of Boston, Massachusetts and the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, remain active as the last surviving public examples from World War II.

Since the turn of the century there has existed a growing interest in Victory Gardens. A grassroots campaign promoting such gardens has recently sprung up in the form of new Victory Gardens in public spaces, Victory Garden websites and blogs, as well as petitions to both renew a national campaign for the Victory Garden and to encourage the re-establishment of a Victory Garden on the White House lawn. In March 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama, planted an 1,100 square foot "Kitchen Garden" on the White House lawn, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt's, to raise awareness about healthy food which was one of Mrs. Obama's advocacy issues

Biodynamic wine

Do California wineries really pack cow-horns full of cow manure and crystals, then plant them at various locations picked by a Shaman, during the autumnal equinox ? Yes they do. Is that the whole story? No it’s not, otherwise I’d have to agree with folks from out-of-state who call us loco. No wait, I may have to agree with them anyway. The point is, manure from dairy cows is superior to shit from horses or chickens. Why?

“Because a dairy cow has an unequaled digestive process which is enhanced by cosmic life-giving forces in her hooves and horns that enable the nitrogen in her manure to rekindle life within the earth.”

Does the story end there? No, otherwise I really would have to concede lunacy. The story continues:

“When vintners dig up the horns six months later, they find the manure transformed into a dark, rich, moist substance that smells surprisingly sweet and earthy. Then they mix it with water and spray it over the crops like regular fertilizer.”

Does it work ..? Research is slim, but it has been practiced in Bavaria since 1924, when Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner introduced biodynamics to the farming industry. I mean, there’s good reason why Bavaria scores the most stellar dairy products on the planet.

Information courtesy of Barefoot Winery

HAPPY EARTH DAY EVERYONE ..!

Thomas Robert Malthus

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 – 23 December 1834), was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularised the economic theory of rent.

Malthus has become widely known for his theories concerning population, and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. The six editions of his Principles of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving, and in principle as perfectible. William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, believed in the possibility of almost limitless improvement of society. So, in a more complex way, did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose notions centered on the goodness of man and the liberty of citizens bound only by the social contract, a form of popular sovereignty.

Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Believing that one could not change human nature, Malthus wrote:

"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist, that the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, that population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, that the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."

Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticised the Poor Laws, and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. He thought these measures would encourage domestic production, and so promote long-term benefits.
Malthus became hugely influential, and controversial, in economic, political, social and scientific thought. Many of those whom subsequent centuries sometimes term "evolutionary biologists" also read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection. Malthus remains a writer of great significance and controversy. (read more)

It's Just A Plant

The Botany Of Desire

Plants and animals

are our friends...

it's the Botany of Desire

King Corn

USDA forecast the largest U.S. corn yield in history for the 2009/10 marketing year. Corn production is forecast at 13.0 billion bushels. For all this food potential, this corn will be used to fatten cattle and make high fructose corn syrup to sweeten our soda pop and snacks.

King Corn

The Future of Food

90 min. to get deep understanding on how the system is working and about MONSANTO... and why those criminals MUST BE STOPPED!


Deborah Koons Garcia's The Future of Food
by Lily Films

Watch full film here: The Future of Food