Dismantle Civilisation

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet

Vandana Shiva says industrial agriculture has left Indian farmers indebted and destitute, and explains how to stem the tide of suicides.

Last month, the world got a glimpse of an epidemic that has hit India in the last decade when news reports alerted readers to the suicides of 1,500 farmers in the Indian state of Chattisgarh.

But this has been only a fraction of the suicides committed by farmers since 1997, says Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a physicist, environmentalist, feminist, science policy advocate and director of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

While initial news reports blamed the recent suicides on falling water levels, Shiva explains that the suicide epidemic in India is a lot more complicated and far-reaching.

“Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives,” she wrote recently. “Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.”

At the heart of this is a circle of indebtedness that has resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which exported industrial agricultural practices to places like India and in doing so, made seeds, a once-renewable resource for farmers, into something that had be bought from corporations.

“In 1998, the World Bank’s structural-adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta,” Shiva wrote. “The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm-saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved. … The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture.”

In an interview with AlterNet, Shiva explained how Monsanto’s Bt cotton has exemplified what can go wrong with industrial agriculture; what happens to farming communities when traditional farming methods are replaced by corporate sponsored mono-cropping; and how to stem the tide of farmer suicides.

Tara Lohan: Farmer suicides in India recently made the news when stories broke last month about 1,500 farmers taking their own lives, what do you attribute these deaths to?

Vandana Shiva: Over the last decade, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide. The 1,500 figure is for the state of Chattisgarh. In Vidharbha, 4,000 are committing suicide annually. This is the region where 4 million acres of cotton have been grown with Monsanto’s Bt cotton. The suicides are a direct result of a debt trap created by ever-increasing costs of seeds and chemicals and constantly falling prices of agricultural produce.

When Monsanto’s Bt cotton was introduced, the seed costs jumped from 7 rupees per kilo to 17,000 rupees per kilo. Our survey shows a thirteenfold increase in pesticide use in cotton in Vidharbha. Meantime, the $4 billion subsidy given to U.S. agribusiness for cotton has led to dumping and depression of international prices.

Squeezed between high costs and negative incomes, farmers commit suicide when their land is being appropriated by the money lenders who are the agents of the agrichemical and seed corporations. The suicides are thus a direct result of industrial globalized agriculture and corporate monopoly on seeds.

TL: Suicides of Indian farmers unfortunately is not news — how long has this been a problem, how serious is the problem, what are the underlying causes?

VS: The first suicide that we studied took place in Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh in 1997. This region is a rain-fed dry region and used to grow dry land crops such as millets, pigeon pea etc. In 1997, the seed corporations converted the region from biodiverse agriculture to monocultures of cotton hybrid. The farmers were not told they would need irrigation. They were not told that they would need fertilizers and pesticides. They were not told they could not save the seeds. The cotton seeds were sold as “White Gold,” with a false promise that farmers would become millionaires. Instead, the farmers landed in severe unpayable debt. This is how the suicides began.

TL: You said that 200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997 — where does that statistic come from? Are there numbers to compare suicide rates for farmers pre-Green Revolution with the numbers we are seeing today?

VS: The statistics on farmers suicides are kept by the National Crime Bureau. Since there were no large-scale suicides prior to 1997, the statistics was not maintained before that. The combination of the spread of nonrenewable seeds and globalized trade has triggered the epidemic of suicides.

TL: What role does water and water management play in the problems Indian farmers are facing?

VS: India is a land of varied climates, from rainforests to deserts. Seventy percent of Indian farming is rain-fed (dependent on rain not irrigation). Introducing inappropriate crops and cropping patterns has aggravated the water crisis and precipitated more frequent crop failure. Ecological agriculture needs 10 times less water than chemical farming. Green Revolution varieties, hybrids and GM crops are all bred for irrigation. On the one hand, this puts pressure on farmers in low-rainfall zones to drill tube wells, which fail — on the other hand, it leads to more frequent crop failure.

TL: How has the Green Revolution changed things for farmers? Is the most significant change in the ownership of seeds by corporations?

VS: The Green Revolution was the name given to the introduction of chemical/industrial farming in India in 1965-66 under the pressure of the U.S. government and World Bank. The Green Revolution was based on seeds bred for responding to chemical inputs. Companies made money from sale of agrichemicals, the seeds were in the public domain.

Genetic engineering is often called the second Green Revolution. Now, the seeds are owned by corporations through intellectual property rights. This leads to a very drastic change in how farming is done and who controls decisions in agriculture.

TL: How have companies like Monsanto, Cargill and others created what you call a “suicide economy” for farmers?

VS: Monsanto’s contribution to the suicide economy is by extracting super profits from farmers in the form of royalties and by intentionally transforming seeds from a renewable resource that farmers can save to a nonrenewable resource that they must buy in the market every year. Monsanto had a big role in shaping the TRIPs agreement [on intellectual property] of WTO.

Cargill’s contribution to the suicide economy is as the biggest controller of agricultural trade. Cargill was responsible for the Agreement on Agriculture, which has promoted dumping and denying farmers of the Third World their right to fair prices.

TL: Is there a particular area of the country that has been hardest hit? Which are the worst off and what are they growing? Are other areas more successful and if so, why?

VS: The worst-hit suicide areas of the country are Vidharbha, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka. These are also the cotton-growing areas, and these are the areas where Monsanto has established a monopoly on seed supply through Bt cotton. Areas where farmers have their own seed, where they are growing diversity of food crops and are practicing organic farming are areas free of debt and farmers suicides.

Navdanya has started a seeds-of-hope program in the suicide belt of Vidharbha. Creating seed banks, training farmers in organic agriculture and helping farmers with fair trade has helped farmers increase their incomes tenfold compared to farmers growing Bt cotton.

TL: What should the government of India be doing, and what can the world community do?

VS: The government of India should be playing a major role in public seed supply. Before Monsanto’s entry, 80 percent of the seed used to come from farmers’ own fields, and 20 percent came from government seed farms. Under privatization, government seed breeding has been wiped out. Seed is a public and common good, and hence seeds should stay in the hands of farming communities and public-sector institutions.

The government should also impose a moratorium on GMO seeds such as Bt cotton until full independent assessment of its performance in small farmers’ fields has been completed. The government should also promote organic farming, since from the perspective of farmers this is the only way to get out of the debt and suicide trap.

At the international level, the world community needs to defend seed as a common good and build a strong movement against seed patents and seed monopolies. People can also contribute to Navdanya’s Seeds of Hope Campaign.

To learn more, you can also read Shiva’s most recent article on the subject.

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Following on from Techno-Peasant’s eye-opening, but ultimately realistic article about living outside of civilization, I thought this would be a perfect time to publish Sharon Astyk’s brilliant list of “100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil“. Lists rarely cut it when looking at real life solutions or providing effective advice: these things are better accumulated as life-experiences and shared knowledge. However, this list is far too good to ignore – American-centric it may be, but considering that the USA is probably the most oil-dependent culture on Earth, it seems a decent basis for all industrial cultures. Some items may not be relevant, some are obvious, some are a little wishy-washy, but taken as a whole you would be foolish not to read it:

SPRING

1. Rethink your seed starting regimen. How will you do it without potting soil, grow lights and warming mats. Consider creating manure heated hotbeds, using your own compost, building a greenhouse, or coldframe, direct seeding early versions of transplanted crops, etc…
2. Your local feed store has chicks right now – even suburbanites might consider ordering a few bantam hens and keeping them as exotic birds. Worth a shot, no? You can grow some feed in your garden for Them, as well as enjoying the eggs.
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can’t grow for a year because of some crisis? Order extras from places with cheap seed like www.fedcoseeds.com, www.superseeds.com, www.rareseed.com.
4. Yard sale season will begin soon in the warmer parts of the country, and auctions are picking up now in the North. Stocking up on things like shoes, extra coats, kids clothing in larger sizes, hand tools, garden equipment is simply prudent – and can save a lot Of money.
5. The real estate “season” will begin shortly, with families wanting to get settled in new homes during the summer, before the school year starts. If you are planning on buying or selling this year, now is the time to research the market, new locations, find that country property or the urban duplex with a big yard.
6. Once pastures are flush, last year’s hay is usually a bargain, and many farmers clean out their barns. Manure and old hay are great soil builders for anyone.
7. Check out your local animal shelter and adopt a dog or cat for rodent control, protection and friendship during peak oil.
8. As things green up, begin to identify and use local wild edibles. Eat your lawn’s dandilions, your daylily shoots, new nettles. Hunt for morels (learn what you are doing first!!) and wild onions. Get in the habit of seeing what food there is to be had everywhere you go.
9. Set up rainbarrel or cistern systems and start harvesting your precipitation.
10. Planning to only grow vegetables? Truly sustainable gardens include a lot of pretty flowers, which have value as medicinals, dye and fiber plants, seasoning herbs, and natural cleaners and pest repellants. Instead of giving up ornamentals altogether, grow a garden full of daylilies, lady’s mantle, dye hollyhocks and coreopsis, foxgloves, soapwart, bayberry, hip roses, bee balm and other useful beauties.
11. Get a garden in somewhere around you – campaign to turn open space into a community garden, ask if you can use a friend’s backyard, get your company or church, synagogue, mosque or school to grow a garden for the poor. Every garden and experienced gardener we have is a potential hedge against the disaster.
12. Join a CSA if you don’t garden, and get practice cooking and eating a local diet in season.
13. Eggs and greens are at their best in spring – dehydrated greens and cooked eggshells, ground up together add calcium and a host of other nutrients to flour, and you won’t taste them. We’re not going to be able to afford to waste food in the future, so get out of the habit now.
14. Make rhubarb, parsnip or dandelion wine for later consumption.
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy People.
16. Start a compost pile, or begin worm composting. Everyone can and should compost. Even apartment dwellers can keep worms or a compost Bin and use the product as potting soil.
17. Use spring holidays and feasts as a chance to bring up peak oil with friends and family. Freedom and rebirth are an excellent subjects To lead into the Long Emergency.
18. Store the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
19. With the renewal of the building season, now is the time to scavenge free building materials, like cinder blocks, old windows and scrap wood – with permission, of course.
20. Try and adapt to the spring weather early – get outside, turn down your heat or bank your fires, cut down on your fuel consumption as though you had no choice. Put on those sweaters one more time.
21. Shepherds are flush with wool – now is the time to buy some fleece and start spinning! Drop spindles are easy to make and cheap to use. Check out www.learntospin.com
22. Take a hard look back over the last winter – if you had had to survive on what you grew and stored last year, would you have made it? Early spring was famously the “starving time” when stores ran out and everyone was hungry. Remember, when you plan your food Needs that not much produces early in spring, and in northern climates, A winter’s worth of food must last until May or June.
23. Trade cuttings and divisions, seeds and seedlings with your neighbors. Learn what’s out there in your community, and sneak some useful plants into your neighbors’ garden.
24. If you’ve got a nearby college, consider scavenging the dorm Dumpsters. College students often leave astounding amounts of Stuff behind including excellent books, clothes, furniture, etc…
25. Say a schecheyanu, a blessing, or a prayer. Or simply be grateful for a series of coincidences that permit us to be here, in this place, as the world and the seasons come to life again. Try to make sure that this year, this time, you will take more joy in what you have, and prepare a bit better to soften the blow that is about to fall.

SUMMER

1. If you don’t can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don’t garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer’s market at the end of the day – they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
2. Consider dehydrating outer leaves of broccoli, cabbage, etc…, and grinding the dried mixture. It can be added to flours to increase the nutritional value of your bread.
3. Buy hay in the summer, rather than gradually over the winter. Now is an excellent time to put up simple shelters for hay storage, to avoid high early spring and winter prices.
4. Firewood, woodstoves and heating materials are at their Cheapest right now. Invest now for winter. The same is true Insulating materials.
5. Back to School Planning is a great time to reconsider transportation in light of peak oil. Can your children walk? Bike? If they cannot do either for reasons of safety (rather than distance) could an adult do so with them? Could you hire a local teenager to take them to school on foot or by wheel? Can you find ways to carpool, if you must drive? Grownups can do this too.
6. Also when getting ready to go back to school, consider the environmental impact of your scheduling and activities – are there ways to minimize driving/eating out/equipment costs/fuel consumption? Could your family do less in formal “activities” and more in family work?
7. Consider either home schooling or engaging in supplemental home Education. Your kids may need a large number of skills not provided By local public schools, and a critical perspective that they certainly Won‘t learn in an institutional setting. Teach them.
8. Try and minimize air conditioning and electrical use during high Summer. Take cool showers or baths, use ice packs, reserve activity When possible for early am or evening. Rise at 4 am and get much of Your work done then.
9. Consider adding a solar powered attic fan, available from Real Goods www.realgoods.com.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home A paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite The neighbors in. Get to know them.
11. Be prepared for summer blackouts, some quite extensive. Have Emergency supplies and lighting at hand.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will Be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
13. Make your own summer camp. Instead of sending kids to soccer Camp, create an at-home skills camp that helps prepare people for Peak oil. Invite the neighbor kids to join you. Have a blast!
14. Begin adapting herbs and other potted plants to indoor culture. Consider adding small tropicals – figs, lemons, oranges, even bananas can often be grown in cold climate homes. Obviously, if you live in a warm climate well, be prepared for some jealousy from the rest of us come February .
15. Plant a fall garden in high summer – peas, broccoli, kale, lettuces, Beets, carrots, turnips, etc… All of the above will last well into early Winter in even the harshest climates, and with proper techniques or In milder areas, will provide you with fresh food all year long
16. Put up a new clothesline! Consider hand washing clothes outside, Since everyone will probably enjoy getting wet (and cool) anyhow.
17. If you have access to safe waters, go fishing. Get some practice, and Learn a new skill.
18. Encourage pick-up games at your house. Post-peak, children will Need to know how to entertain themselves.
19. For teens, encourage them to develop their own home businesses over The summers. Whether doing labor or creating a product, you may rely On them eventually to help support the family. Or have them clean out Your closets and attic and help you reorganize. Let them sell the stuff.
20. Buy a hand pushed lawn mower if you have less than 1 acre of grass. New ones are easy to push and pleasant, and will save you energy and that Unpleasant gas smell.
21. Keep an eye out for unharvested fruits and nuts – many suburban and rural Areas have berry and fruit bushes that no one harvests. Take advantage and Put up the fruit.
22. Practice extreme water conservation during the summer. Mulch to reduce The need for irrigation. Bathe less often and with less water. Reduce clothes Washing when possible.
23. This is an excellent time to toilet train children – they can run around naked If necessary and accidents will do no harm. Try and get them out of diapers now, Before winter.
24. Consider replacing lawns with something that doesn’t have to be mown – Ground covers like vetch, moss, even edibles like wintergreen or lingonberry, Chamomile or mint.
25. If it is summer time, then the living is probably easy. Take some time To enjoy it – to picnic, to celebrate democracy (and try and bring one about , To explore your own area, walk in the nearby woods.

FALL (AUTUMN)

1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc…) are easily made from cheap or free materials – goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I’ve heard of getting them free.
2. Stock up for winter as though the hard times will begin this year. Besides dried and canned foods, don’t forget root cellarable and storable local produce, and season extension (cold frames, greenhouses, etc…) techniques for fresh food when you make your food inventory.
3. Thanksgiving sales tend to be when supermarkets offer the cheapest deals on excellent supplements to food storage, like shortening, canned pumpkin, spices, etc… I’ve also heard of stores given turkeys away free with grocery purchases – turkeys can then be cooked, canned and stored. Don’t forget to throw in storable ingredients for your family’s holiday staples – in hard times, any kind of celebration or continuity is appreciated.
4. Go leaf rustling for your garden and compost pile. If you Happen into places where people leave their leaves out for Pickup, grab the bags and set them to composting or mulching Your own garden.
5. Plant a last crop of over wintering spinach, and enjoy in The fall and again in spring.
6. Or consider planting a bed of winter wheat. Chickens can Even graze it lightly in the fall, and it will be ready to harvest in Time to use the bed for your fall garden. Even a small bed will Make quite a bit of fresh, delicious bread.
7. Hit those last yard sales, or back to school sales and buy a few extra clothes (or cloth to make them) for growing children and extra shoes for everyone. They will be welcome in storage, particularly if prices rise because of trade issues or inflation.
8. The best time to expand your garden is now – till or mulch and let sod rot over the winter. Add soil amendments, manure, Compost and lime.
9. Now is an excellent time to start the 100 mile diet in most locales – Stores and farms and markets are bursting with delicious local produce And products. Eat local and learn new recipes.
10. Rose hip season is coming – most food storage items are low in accessible vitamin C. Harvest wild or tame unsprayed rose hips, and dry them for tea to ensure long-term good health. Rose hips are Delicious mixed with raspberry leaves and lemon balm.
11. Discounts on alcohol are common between Halloween and Christmas – this is an excellent time to stock up on booze for personal, medicinal, trade or cooking. Pick up some vanilla beans as well, and make your own vanilla out of that cheap vodka.
12. Gardening equipment, and things like rainbarrels go on sale in the late summer/early fall. And nurseries often are trying to rid themselves of perennial plants – including edibles and medicinals. It isn’t too late to plant them in most parts of the country, although some care is needed in purchasing for things that have become rootbound.
13. Local honey will be at its cheapest now – now is the time to stock up. Consider making friends with the beekeeper, and perhaps Taking lessons yourself.
14. Fall is the cheapest time to buy livestock, either to keep or for butchering. Many 4Hers, and those who simply don’t want to keep excess animals over the winter are anxious to find buyers now. In many cases, at auction, I see animals selling for much less than the meat you can expect to obtain from their carcass is worth.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a “cold room/area” – a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn’t freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and Insulating it with Styrofoam panels
16. Now is a great time to build community (and get stuff done) by instituting a local “work bee” – invite neighbors and friends to come help either with a project for your household, or to share in some good deed for another community member. Provide food, drink, tools and get to work on whatever it is (building, harvesting, quilting, knitting – the sky is the limit), and at the same time strengthen your community. Make sure that next time, the work benefits a different neighbor or community member.
17. Most local charities get the majority of their donations between now and December. Consider dividing your charitable donations so that they are made year round, but adding extra volunteer hours to help your group handle the demands on them in the fall.
18. Many medicinal and culinary herbs are at their peak now. Consider learning about them and drying some for winter use.
19. If there is a gleaning program near you (either for charity or personal use) consider joining. If not, start one. Considerable amounts of food are wasted in the harvesting process, and you can either add to your storage or benefit your local shelters and food pantries.
20. Dig out those down comforters, extra blankets, hats with the earflaps, flannel jammies, etc… You don’t need heat in your sleeping areas – just warm clothes and blankets.
21. Learn a skill that can be done in the dark or by candlelight, while sitting with others in front of a heat source. Knitting, crocheting, whittling, rug braiding, etc… can all be done mostly by touch with little light, and are suitable for companionable evenings. In addition, learn to sing, play instruments, recite memorized speeches and poetry, etc… as something to do on dark winter evenings.
22. While I wouldn’t expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc…
23. Use a solar cooker or parabolic solar cooker whenever possible To prepare food. Or eat cool salads and raw foods. Not only won’t You heat up the house, but you’ll save energy.
24. A majority of children are born in the summer Early fall, which suggests that some of us are doing more than Keeping warm . Now is a good time to get one’s birth Control updated .
25. Celebrate the harvest – this is a time of luxury and plenty, and should be treated as such and enjoyed that way. Cook, drink, eat, talk, sing, pray, dance, laugh, invite guests. Winter is long and comes soon enough. Celebrate!

WINTER

1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you – woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery… take advantage of people who want to teach their skills
2. Get serious about land use planning – even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.
3. The Winter Lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without Engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness – keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don’t just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not – but planning for the former won’t prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
5. Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc…, and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn’t recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission
6. Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.
7. The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area’s elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc… Offer help with stocking Up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they Are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save May be your own.
10. Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder Temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, Snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter Camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.
11. Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how To use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers. Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.
12. Grow sprouts on your windowsill.
13. Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around – could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade Composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.
14. If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the People you love.
15. If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness Item, or a gift certificate to a place like Lehmans or Real Goods. Considering giving Such gifts to friends and family – a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans, These are useful and appreciated items whether or not you believe in peak oil.
16. Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use What you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.
17. Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.
18. Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, And letters last forever.
19. Make a list of goals for the coming year, and the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.
20. Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren (or someone else’s) may want To know what these days were like.
21. Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful To those around you.
22. For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, Decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny Days, and try and exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.
23. Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.
24. Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews On top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven That sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.
25. Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.

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Association Kokopelli endeavors :

• - to promote the preservation of biodiversity through the distribution of organic and open-pollinated seeds of heirloom varieties of vegetables and grains.
• - to create a network of gardeners involved in seed saving.
• - to help Third World countries to develop sustainable organic agriculture through the gift of seeds and the setting of seed grower networks.

Kokopelli is a fantastic organisation, maintaining & distributing 1000s of open-pollinated heirloom seed varieties, as well as making these seeds available free to the ‘third world’. You can join, choosing between 3 different membership categories, and also ‘adopt a seed’ to grow each year to make sure that rare variety does not go extinct.

Their seed catalogue is open to the public, although members can buy the seeds at a slightly lower price, and activist or benefactor members are sent a list of seeds that are in danger of extinction, which are available free to those members willing to grow to help maintain their existence. Excellent!

This is the largest and most interesting range of heirloom seeds that we have come across.

The directory, which costs £24 to the UK and £28 to europe, is definitely the most comprehensive information about vegetables, varieties and the seeds. The full colour photo pages are a great intro to people who haven’t experience of heirloom seeds. Inspiring.

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As the world’s seed supply is increasingly owned by multinational companies, farmers and gardeners are losing control of the seeds available to them. Vegetable varieties that were valued for their superior flavor are being replaced by varieties that can withstand traveling across the country, or across the world, in today’s global food market.The seed bank reverses this trend by teaching people to save the seeds from their favorite vegetable and flower varieties that grow in their own backyards. Just like those from my grandpa’s “old-timey” tomatoes, seeds are saved from fruits and vegetables because they taste delicious, or perhaps grow particularly well in our unique New England soils and climate. The seeds are then collected and stored in the seed bank and made available to the community. Some seeds are sold to the public, while others are distributed free to seed bank members on the condition that they will grow, save, and return to the bank double the amount of seed taken.

Original article from Orion magazine.

We’d love to hear from anyone creating their own local community seed bank.

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