IFSA 2012 workshop ‘The meaning of semi-subsistence farming in different cultural contexts’

Together with Imre Kovach and Catherine Darrot,  I will be hosting a workshop at the IFSA symposium in Aarhus, Denmark from the 1st of July until the 4th of July 2012. The workshop is aimed at exploring the multiple meanings of semi-subsistent food production strategies in different cultural context. Two questions are at the centre of [...]

Porto Alegre’s 22 year old farmers’ market

On the saturday of my arrival in Porto Alegre, the “Feira dos Agricultores Ecologistas” was celebrating its twenty-second birthday. The market is situated at the border of the big Parque Farroupilha Redenção in the city centre and is at least a kilometer long. Back then, the market started with a group of citizens in Porto Alegre in search for healthier food [...]

The Black Gold

Last week, students of the course ‘Agrarische en rurale ontwikkeling, sociologische perspectieven’  had two days of excursions and could choose from 4 different excursions to see different models of multifunctionality and institutional arrangements in farming (see Birgit’s blog about a different excursion). With our group, we visited the Stadsboerderij Almere and the nearby Zonnehoeve in Zeewolde. Both farms have different other [...]

Thesis possibility: Sheep & Wine in South Africa

The Rural Sociology Group offers a possibility to do your master thesis about organic wine production in South Africa. As organic wine production cannot make use of pesticides, wine growers search for other ways to control the weeds in the vineyard, for example by mowing or burning. More recently, the idea has come up to [...]

Looking at organic+ activities and their perception by consumers in the rural web

Before I start writing about organic+ activities and consumers I would like to introduce myself. My name is Corinna Feldmann and I study Organic Agriculture in my second year. I just finished my master thesis: ‘What does the consumer take up? – A case study on communication in the rural web around the dairy in Andeer’. Everything started [...]

The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a Post Carbon Food System

More and more scientists are pointing to the fact that the end of the cheap oil era will require us to fundamentally change the prevailing current food and agricultural system; a system that has become addicted to and dependent on fossil fuels. This week I came across a report entitled “The Food and Farming Transition: [...]

Resistance and Autonomy in Western Mexico – local actors creating a place of their own

 By Peter R.W. Gerritsen, Department of Ecology and Natural Resources, South Coast University Centre, University of Guadalajara, Av. Independencia Nacional 151, 48900, Autlán, Jal., Mexico. Email: petergerritsen@cucsur.udg.mx  The local effects of global processes in the Mexican countryside are well documented; describing problems related to the quality of rural producers’ life, identity and traditional practices, as [...]

Pumpkin harvest and local food

Last Saturday 30 adults and children came to help with the harvest of pumpkins of farmer André in the village of Hemmen, just four kilometers from Wageningen. We harvested around 9 thousand kilo of the approximately 15 thousand kilo on the one hectare field. The invitation to help was the first event organized by a [...]

Selective breeding in organic dairy production II – PhD-thesis completed

Earlier I wrote a post on the PhD-thesis ‘Selective breeding in organic dairy production’ by Wytze Nauta. The complete PhD-thesis can be downloaded at the site of the Louis Bolk Institute

Allium Sativum L.

I drove to Minburn yesterday where I spent a great day at the Small Potatoes Farm. I past the road to the farm without noticing and stopped at the post office, next to the grain elevator, to ask for directions. A good choice because the post office, I soon realized is the epic center of this tiny town. [...]