Future Primitive

Zev Friedman grew up in Sylva, NC and received his B.S. in Human Ecology from UNCA. Zev’s specialty is forest agriculture; he now runs the Forest Cuisine Project, which helps land owners to start forest farms and to market their products. He is particularly passionate about assisting landowners in setting up mushroom farming operations and in using fungi as remediators for damaged environments. Zev also specializes in urban permaculture design and installation, including many private residences, as well as consulting on the design of the Mars Hill town hall and grounds; he is an active member and teacher in Transition Asheville, helping to plan for Asheville’s future as an abundant, self-reliant city in the age of petroleum decline.

www.upgardens.com

Zev speaks with Joanna about permaculture and imagination, learning from indigenous societies, transitioning to an Earth-based way of living, working with the “cultural compost”, attuning to the local ecosystem through the Forest Cuisine project,…and more

Music: “Qosh tari” ( from Ouzbekistan L’art du dotar) by Hamidov, Khodaverdiev, Razzaqov

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For 25 years Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. Mark’s work with the Food System included the development of a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, several farmers’ markets, a 20-acre community supported agriculture farm, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.

Winne now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication work for the Community Food Security Coalition. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous newspapers, organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. He is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008) and Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture (Beacon Press, 2010). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

www.markwinne.com

Mark speaks with Joanna about the food system and emotional connectedness, freedom from the industrial food system, active citizen engagement, re-learning cooking skills as a life-changing shift, the nightmare of the industrial slaughterhouses, food and reinvigorating democracy…

Music: “Adagio” (from String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”) by Leos Janacek.

Note: A special thank you to Pam Roy and FarmToTable for making this interview possible.

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Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant, and designer of regenerative systems. He is the author of the award-winning, best-selling books Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, the information-packed website HarvestingRainwater.com, and the Drops in a Bucket Blog. He lives his talk on an oasis-like eight of an acre in dowtown Tucson, Arizona, by harvesting over 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year where just 12 inches per year falls from the sky.

Brad speaks with Joanna about all the aspects of rain harvesting: “planting the rain” – a concept learned from an African farmer, how to begin, the social effects of rainharvesting…
http://www.harvestingrainwater.com

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download