Nyssa

I'm reading a book titled Deep Time Reckoning by Vincent Ialenti which is about how we consider and plan for how the world will look in the far future. In it, he proposes a very Solarpunk idea called 'future sister cities' where communities will be paired with other communities that in the future have climates analogous to their own. This is intended to help share knowledge about how to design infrastructure, natural systems, and human endeavors to be more in line with the climates that towns, villages, and cities will experience in the future.

A data driven assessment of the role of verticle farming in feeding the world.

“The economics of producing leafy greens and lettuce in vertical farms can work, if electricity prices are low”

I've been thinking about the advantages of tool libraries vs. maker spaces and why I think the latter would be more beneficial for creating access to tools for life and hobbies.

While I like the concept of tool libraries, I think providing larger sets of work spaces: art studios, carpentry spaces, bike shops, kitchens, office spaces, sewing rooms, etc. makes a lot more sense. For most of these activities, you need access to a variety of tools at once, and not everyone has space at home to work on refinishing furniture or spinning pottery. To me, the dream is having a series of community centers in every neighborhood that has various labs for community members to access to partake in hobbies, repair their stuff, etc. I do think integrating tool libraries into these spaces would be useful, for instance, the carpentry studio could have a wall of tools for you to check out if you need to accomplish something at home.

There are of course applications where tool libraries make more sense to me. Neighborhood garden tool sheds for example. I just think focusing on developing maker spaces would be a more effective way of providing these types of resources to communities.

Thoughts?

TLDR Biological soil amendments can be quite elusive in terms of results. Be wary and investigate the actual need the product is fulfilling and whether or not it's claimed mechanism is reasonable and effective.

TLDR: Pasture in former forestland, such as New England, can quickly be returned to forest, soaking up carbon. There is an interesting opportunity for synergy here, as removing cattle from a relatively small amount of land can have outsized impacts compared to the larger grazing areas in the prairie by pairing the removal of cattle with reforestation. These high opportunity areas could be a highly effective investment and much more financially and politically feasible.

Study discussed in article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2405758121

This article really highlights to me how critical infrastructure is to achieving a sustainable food system. There are plenty of people growing food in an ecologically mindful manner, but they're so atomized that they need to do everything themselves. And the infrastructure is so centralized that you're forced into the industrial model if you want to go beyond the farmer market level. We need more meat lockers, local grain mills, oil pressers, etc. to build out regional food production networks.