As a research project, this one is a little unusual. Its material costs are low and it provides a return on investment (i.e., produces food), but it is extremely labor intensive. This makes sense, though, because if fossil fuels are taken out of the food system, we’re down to what we have available and must … More Grow Your Own — Part V: Support the Project

As you’ve read all week, we are going to be simulating the crash of fossil-fuel infrastructure in our food system. You can read about the overall idea, the chronological outline, and the study parameters in previous posts. Today we’ll be discussing how we’ll be sharing our results as we go. Regular Social- and Multimedia Reports … More Grow Your Own — Part IV: Follow Along

We should define the parameters under which we’ll be carrying out this simulation. You can read about the inspiration and overall idea for this experiment in Part I and the chronological outline in Part II. Here we’ll drill down on exactly what we’ll be doing. 1. We will concentrate our growing efforts on about half … More Grow Your Own — Part III: Rules for the Experiment

I used to ask my students, “how would your life change if fossil fuels or even just oil ran out?” Most answers involve transportation, which makes sense because the only time many of us think about oil is when we fill up our cars. In fact, the biggest immediate disruptions would be to our clean … More Grow Your Own — Part II: When Fossil Fuels Fail

What if fossil fuels disappeared? That is the premise of the Low Technology Institute and the question is not rhetorical. Fossil fuels will stop being used, whether it is tomorrow or in a few decades. At some point we will no longer be using coal, natural gas, or petroleum for our main energy sources. Perhaps … More Grow Your Own — Part I: What if Fossil Fuels Disappeared?