Eco-Israel offers English-speaking young adults, ages 18-30, the opportunity to embrace permaculture and sustainable living through intensive hands-on experience and coursework on an organic farm in Israel.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Ancient Lessons: Sustainable Agriculture Takes Root at Kayam Farm
Check out this feature about Kayam Farm, the sister farm of Hava & Adam. We are excited for Thursday for a group from Baltimore to come visit Hava & Adam and meet the Eco-Israel participants.
Another series of macro photos this time by Max Ojserkis. Click here for the full set.
New UN Report on How to Feed the World's Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture
There are a billion hungry people in the world and that number could rise as food insecurity increases along with population growth, economic fallout and environmental crises. But a roadmap to defeating hunger exists, if we can follow the course — and that course involves ditching corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive farming.
“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. And today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live,” says Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Agroecology is more or less what many Americans would simply call “organic agriculture,” although important nuances separate the two terms.
Used successfully by peasant farmers worldwide, agroecology applies ecology to agriculture in order to optimize long-term food production, requiring few purchased inputs and increasing soil quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity over time. Agroecology also values traditional and indigenous farming methods, studying the scientific principals underpinning them instead of merely seeking to replace them with new technologies. As such, agroecology is grounded in local (material, cultural and intellectual) resources.
Really cool permaculture project at UMASS:
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is taking another groundbreaking step toward reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and combating global climate change by implementing one of the first permaculture gardens on a public university campus in the country. The scope of this project is considerable; UMass students are responsible for transforming a conventional ¼ acre grass landscape into a highly productive and low maintenance garden using no fossil fuels on-site. This involved layering over 250,000 pounds of organic matter by hand during October and November 2010. (umass permaculture blog)
Here are just a few of Marissa’s amazing close-ups of flowers, fruits, vegetables and other naturally growing creatures. For the full set click here.
Want to learn more about Eco-Israel or the best 5 months of your life?
Sunday March 13th at 2pm Eastern time, we are hosting an information session. During the session we’ll discuss the various aspects of the Eco-Israel experience and you’ll be able to ask questions. To register for the session follow the link.
Becca, Eco5 reflections:
I have been back in Pittsburgh for a week now and at times it feels like the entire Israel experience was just an eventful dream. It seems like a distant memory to be walking along the mulch paths in between spaceship-looking domes, admiring the beauty of the plants creating a jungle out of the gardens. It feels like a distant memory…
There is no possible way to cover the happenings of the five months spent on the Chava v’ Adam farm. Even if I somehow wrote a fatty book covering all of he objective details of the experience, I would be leaving out the most influential part of the experience, the real journey that was traveled within each of our minds. It would be a different story for each individual on the program and some maybe didn’t travel very far at all. But I can say that my perspective climbed mountains and fell back down and climbed up again and realized there was even more mountain to be climbed and climbed higher and swam around and swam down into the depths and came back up gasping for air. Each day was an intense journey of the mind and spirit, each day I learned things about myself and about life, and about others. The permaculture mindset has influenced our perspectives more than we’ll ever notice, because when you are immersed in a mindset you often don’t even realize you are there. The happenings internally and externally are infinite; they reach to different levels of consciousness, they reach to different microclimates within the body and mind and within the Land of Israel, I feel so blessed to have been able to spend five months of my life with such amazing peers and friends and teachers and with such amazing plants and animals and opportunities and experiences.
And there it was… Eco five, still alive.
Simply Love
In this TED talk Dan Barber, Executive Chef at Blue Hill Farm describes his love affair with two fish. One turns out to be “faux” sustainable and the other a great example of working with nature to do more with less. He quotes the biologist who is responsible for this sustainable fish / largest private bird sanctuary in Europe, Miguel Medialdea, “I didn’t know anything about fish, I’m and expert in relationships.”
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
…Doesn’t make any sense.”
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
