The Edible Garden

Alys Fowler attempts to avoid shop-bought fruit and vegetables and live off her own home-grown produce. It's no easy task because Alys doesn't want to turn her garden into an allotment, so she's growing her fruit and vegetables among her flowers.

Alys will focus on different foods and show how anyone can grow, cook and eat from their own garden - even if they live in a city.

The Food Forest (The Guytons, NZ)

The Guytons started planting their food forest in 1998 on two acres of bare land in Riverton, New Zealand. This style of gardening was new to Southland so their neighbours did not approve. Now it is an established food forest with hundreds of different plant species. Fruit and nut trees, berries and herbs and wild plants all blended together in a productive and sustainable way.

Seeds Of Freedom

The story of seed has become one of loss, control, dependence and debt. It’s been written by those who want to make vast profit from our food system, no matter what the true cost.

It’s time to change the story.

Evita Ramparte: How Cleansing Cures Cancer

The relationship between unhealthy eating and the development of disease is undeniable. When most people get a cancer diagnosis their doctors are quick to prescribe drugs and harsh treatments such as radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. All of these treatments have a harrowing effect on the body opening it up to a whole host of other problems.

Holistic health practitioners, on the other hand, will often recommend detoxification methods such as cleansing to eliminate cancer from the body. Here Allison Biggar interviews European journalist and ovarian cancer survivor Evita Ramparte about how she cured her cancer naturally through a raw vegan diet without chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

Food Is Free

The Food is Free Project is creating a repeatable model of growing food and community. It is our vision and wish to empower you with the knowledge and know-how to transform your block and neighborhood step-by-step. Using salvaged materials we are building front yard community gardens for all to share. Imagine walking down a block lined with fresh produce ready for the picking. Neighbors not only growing food together, but becoming friends and supporting one another.

Website: Food Is Free

Seeds Of Death

Understanding the deception behind GMO's.

The leaders of Big Agriculture (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta,...) are determined that world's populations remain ignorant about the serious health and environmental risks of genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture. Deep layers of deception and corruption underlie both the science favoring GMOs and the corporations and governments supporting them.

This award-winning documentary, Seeds of Death, exposes the lies about GMOs and pulls back the curtains to witness our planet's future if Big Agriculture's new green revolution becomes our dominant food supply.

A question and answer fact sheet deconstructing Monsanto's GM claims and Big Agriculture's propaganda to accompany the film is available online: Seeds of Death
See also: The World According to Monsanto & A Silent Forest

Geoff Lawton: Permaculture Pioneer & Designer

Food forests are at the heart of Permaculture and fast becoming a hot topic in many areas of debate as people realise the their full potential. Let's face it, with our all consuming global problems, there aren't many natural solutions out there that can halt & reverse deforestation, stabilise the climate by returning carbon to the soil where it belongs, solve poverty & extreme hunger all in one hit are there?

Yet this is exactly what the food forest is capable of, and provided people understand it and are at the centre of the system, they can go on living off that land forever. Here is a video of Geoff Lawton showing a series of food forests that have been planted at Zaytuna farm over successive years.

Survival Food Forest With Chickens



Urban Permaculture

Many of you have been asking what Permaculture can do for you in the small Urban space? Well, one of my students, Angelo, has transformed his tiny Melbourne backyard into an amazing productive garden and documented every detail over the last 4 years. Find out how much food you could grow in the Micro space when you apply Permaculture design creatively. You will be amazed.

See also: Urban Permaculture At Its Best

101 Reasons To Go Vegan

This is a great video presentation by James Wildman of the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida addressing the process related to the creation of 90 – 95% of our dietary animal products. It examines the stories we have been told our whole lives about food that aren’t necessarily true. Sometimes when we are told something long enough, we begin to believe it and make it a part of our lives so heavily that we are not able to see the other side of the coin anymore.

Meet Your Meat

Meet Your Meat is a documentary about factory farming created by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), narrated by Alec Baldwin, and directed by Bruce Friedrich and Cem Akin. The documentary explores the treatment of animals in modern animal agriculture (also known as industrial agriculture or factory farming).

WARNING! Viewer discretion advised. This video contains scenes of extreme violence that some viewers may find disturbing.

Phillip Wollen: Animals Should Be Off The Menu

Amazing must see speech by Phillip Wollen. Cornell and Harvard state that the optimum amount of meat in a healthy diet is precisely zero!

Grocery Star Wars

Not long ago in a supermarket not so far away....
May the farm be with you.

Grow Food Everywhere

Want to get young people to eat fresh vegetables? Help them grow it themselves. In the words of one young Seeds of Leadership (SOL) gardener: "I put my blood, sweat and tears into growing them, which makes them a lot more delicious to me." The SOL garden builds skills and confidence and teaches youth about issues of environmental and social justice and food resiliency.

Seeds of Solidarity Education Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in Orange MA, supported through grants and the generosity of individual contributors. Seeds of Solidarity provides people of all ages with the inspiration and practical skills to use renewable energy and grow food in their communities.

Ron Finley: Guerilla Gardener

Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA - in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."

Food Fight

This video rips right to the core of what's really killing inner city Americans: food.

Processed food, to be exact: the nutrient-depleted, overly-refined, pasteurized homogenized GMO-contaminated pesticide-sprayed food that kills blacks, whites and everyone else by the millions every year.

There's only one music video that stands out in loving contrast against the self-destructive gangsta rap we've all been inundated with over the years: Food Fight moved me to tears and inspired me with the hope that humanity may yet survive the curse of corporate destruction. This video tells the story that even Michelle Obama dare not utter, for it's the true story of how inner city kids, teens and adults are being decimated by GMOs, processed foods, energy drinks and other contortions of the corporate food factory regime.

We ALL need to be food fighters! That means fighting for food justice across America, and especially in the inner cities where the availability of healthy food is limited (by design). There is an agenda in America right now to keep inner city people diseased, dumbed-down, cognitively impaired and nutritionally deficient. The vector of attack is the food supply and vaccines. The motivation behind this is to make sure people can be easily dominated by the system. The food is poison, and it kills orders of magnitude more people than guns, or auto accidents or anything else, including pharmaceutical medicine.

The creators of this video are food fighters. Ultimately, we are all spiritual warriors because what we're fighting for is more than mere substance; we are fighting for the soul of humanity.

Web Of Life (Full Movie)

Biodiversity: the essence of life.
This is a documentary on biodiversity with the brilliant Dr Vandana Shiva, who talks about the devastating 'gifts' of the the corporate agri-business, mass production system of genetically engineered seeds:

“We have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. We have an epidemic of hunger and malnutrition. And, we have an epidemic of farmer suicides…I have grown up in an India where we have driven out mass consumption. In Indian philosophy, Ayurveda is the science of life. Veda means knowledge and ayur means life. And, central to the science of life is food. Sustainability and diversity are very intimately linked.We will continue to save seeds, exchange seeds, and breed seeds. We will NOT obey your brute laws of enslaving life on Earth and enslaving our farmers.”

Dutch subtitles

Part 2

Who Killed The Honey Bee (BBC)

Bees are dying in their millions. It is an ecological crisis that threatens to bring global agriculture to a standstill. Introduced by Martha Kearney, this documentary explores the reasons behind the decline of bee colonies across the globe, investigating what might be at the root of this devastation.

Honey bees are the number one insect pollinator on the planet, responsible for the production of over 90 crops. Apples, berries, cucumbers, nuts, cabbages and even cotton will struggle to be produced if bee colonies continue to decline at the current rate. Empty hives have been reported from as far afield as Taipei and Tennessee. In England, the matter has caused beekeepers to march on Parliament to call on the government to fund research into what they say is potentially a bigger threat to humanity than the current financial crisis.

Investigating the problem from a global perspective, the programme makers travel from the farm belt of California to the flatlands of East Anglia to the outback of Australia. They talk to the beekeepers whose livelihoods are threatened by colony collapse disorder, the scientists entrusted with solving the problem, and the Australian beekeepers who are making a fortune replacing the planet's dying bees. They also look at some of the possible reasons for the declining numbers - is it down to a bee plague, pesticides, malnutrition? Or is the answer something even more frightening?

Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.[1] Colony collapse is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by bees; and ecologically, because of the major role that bees play in the reproduction of plant communities in the wild.

12 things to prevent Colony Collapse Disorder:

#1 General approach: use organic practices
#2 General approach: strengthen bee immune system instead of "attack and kill" what nature uses to remove weak bees
#3 Don't use insecticide (for mite control or any other insect problem) inside of hives - bees are insects!
#4 Allow bees to create their own cell size (typically smaller) - no more pre-made foundation or cells
#5 Genetics based on "survival of the fittest" is superior to genetics resulting from mass production where the weak are medicated
#6 Swarming is the natural way to good genetics
#7 Local bees have adapted to challenges in your area
#8 Stop moving hives
#9 Feed bees honey, not sugar water
#10 Feed bees polyculture blossoms, not monoculture
#11 Stop using insecticides on crops - bees are insects!
#12 Raise hives off the ground

Visit the discussion at Permies

Grow Food, Not Lawns

'I would like to see our culture change so that keeping up with the Joneses means you're more sustainable.' says Heather Flores, the founder of Food Not Lawns. They are a non profit organization that promotes the idea of growing food instead of wasting resources on grassy lawns.

'Lawns are the single largest agricultural sector in the country. They are responsible for more fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and toxins into the river, erosion, run off, water waste, you name it. Petrochemicals. There's really nothing good that lawns are doing for the environment. It seems like it would make a lot more sense to use your land for something that benefits you as an individual vs. surrounding yourself with something that's poisoning you and your family.' she adds.

She estimates that for every 100 square feet, you can generate 100 lbs of food. She says: 'Food Not Lawns is a challenge to the homogenous monoculture of lawn after lawn after lawn'.

Growing Edible Fruits and Vegetables in your Front Yard



The Edible Backyard Barrel Garden



Creating a Food Garden in a Front Yard



Part 2

A Local Food Movement

'A Local Food Movement' is a short documentary about the growing appeal of farmers markets and the importance of buying local food. It captures the spirit of what is happening. Why do we love to go to the farmers market more than the supermarket? Along with the abundance of local produce, fresh and in season, they say it is 10 times more likely that you will strike up a conversation with someone. It's a social event!

See how this revolution is unfolding in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Sergei Boutenko: Wild Edibles

Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

Food Rules

Full lecture: Michael Pollan - Food Rules for Healthy People and Planet

Vanishing Of The Bees

This documentary takes a piercing investigative look at the economic, political and ecological implications of the worldwide disappearance of the honeybee. The film examines our current agricultural landscape and celebrates the ancient and sacred connection between man and the honeybee. The story highlights the positive changes that have resulted due to the tragic phenomenon known as "Colony Collapse Disorder." To empower the audience, the documentary provides viewers with tangible solutions they can apply to their everyday lives. Vanishing of the Bees (2009) unfolds as a dramatic tale of science and mystery, illuminating this extraordinary crisis and its greater meaning about the relationship between humankind and Mother Earth. The bees have a message - but will we listen?

Colony Collapse Disorder

Jacqueline Freeman is the author of an upcoming book "Bees, the OTHER Way". She points out the different strategies that conventional bee keepers might try to save their hives from colony collapse disorder.

Throughout the video I count off the first twelve. There are several more points that ended up on the editing room floor. For that stuff, make sure to visit the discussion.

12 things to prevent colony collapse disorder:

#1 general approach: use organic practices
#2 general approach: strengthen bee immune system instead of "attack and kill" what nature uses to remove weak bees
#3 don't use insecticide (for mite control or any other insect problem) inside of hives - bees are insects!
#4 allow bees to create their own cell size (typically smaller) - no more pre-made foundation or cells
#5 genetics based on "survival of the fittest" is superior to genetics resulting from mass production where the weak are medicated
#6 swarming is the natural way to good genetics
#7 local bees have adapted to challenges in your area
#8 stop moving hives
#9 feed bees honey, not sugar water
#10 feed bees polyculture blossoms, not monoculture
#11 stop using insecticides on crops - bees are insects!
#12 raise hives off the ground