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Permaculture Principle No. 4, “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback”
Easily my most favouritest permaculture principle!! And look! Just now, the Real World has provided a high-profile example. Let’s dive in! What is feedback and how does the World Bank’s recent mea culpa fit into feedback and agriculture?? Juniper (right) and Charlotte (left) are having the kind of discussion that precedes “feedback” in the sheep…
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Alberta Updates Animal Welfare Legislation
Bill 22 is heading to the Legislature! What does it mean for farmers? What does it mean for animals? What does “better” livestock animal welfare look like? Alberta has tabled a long-overdue overhaul of its Animal Protection Act — the first significant update in roughly two decades. With a massive jump in fines for infractions…
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Put Up, Or Shut Up
Wool is having a moment! . . . Just, not here. Why is that? What have these other places got that we don’t? At the most recent Olympic Games in Milan, the American Olympic team wore uniforms made with wool sourced by Ralph Lauren from Oregon’s Shaniko Wool Company. If you’ve been paying attention, you…
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Three Small Levers – Policy Makes Perfect (Or Better)
Agriculture, like every sector, lives on incentives. If the system we’ve built isn’t delivering the outcomes we want, is it time to reconsider what we’re rewarding? We spend a lot of time arguing about what agriculture is becoming. It’s too big, too consolidated. Agriculture is too industrialized, too far from the people it feeds. It’s…
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When Bigger Isn’t Better
Is bigger better? Is there a tipping point when it comes to scale? Are we asking the right questions? Let’s talk about the reality of ‘scaling up.’ There is a moment that comes for almost every farmer. You’ll recognize it when it comes. One day, you’re standing in the yard, looking at the barn, the…
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UNDRIP and Indigenous Knowledge – a rebuttal to Warren Mirko and PLUS
Who has the right to hold knowledge? Who has the right to access it? And what does our reaction to the answers to these questions say about us? A recent column in the National Post questioned the growing influence of Indigenous ways of knowing in Canadian policy and education, arguing that Western societies were built…
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Money, Skills and Time
What is the measure of wealth? What is the measure of poverty? And why — WHY — does it always come down to money? There are three currencies that make a life work. Money.Skills.Time. Every household, every farm, every community runs on some combination of the three. The balance between them determines whether a system…
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Complexity and Complication
Small farms often get judged by the wrong metric. In a world built to understand and optimize complicated systems, small farms can be outliers of complexity. So how are the two systems different? What problem is the complex system trying to solve? There’s a distinction I wish more people understood when they start planning a…
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The Sacred Discipline of Transparency
What role does radical truth-telling occupy in the culture? What is “real life” in the culture of Ag? There’s a saying I’ve always loved: “There are three things that don’t stay hidden for long — the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I used to think that meant the truth has a way of forcing…
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Not As Bad As *That* Guy
When we talk about animal welfare, we often look sideways — at other countries, other systems, other headlines. But is that fair? Which questions *should* we be asking? “We’re not as bad as they are.” I’ve heard it since playground days — usually shouted through grubby hands by the child who’d just been caught doing…
Providence Lane Homestead 