Food and Agriculture as a Foundation for Peace in Northern Afghanistan

In this paper the authors draw on cases from the province of Badakhshan, in Northern Afghanistan, to present three local solutions that all have some potential to break, from the bottom-up, the self-reinforcing loop that characterizes the trap of failed states. While all deal with local-level solutions to food production and diversification, they work at very different levels of human activity: the first describes an agricultural research station’s attempt at improving agricultural production, through an innovative approach to governance. The second example is a bold and innovative experiment to teach women the skills to grow and process vegetables in the high Pamir Mountains. It succeeded in introducing greens and beans to seminomadic communities who had never eaten vegetables before. The third works at the level of identity and imagination: using food culture to rekindle people’s sense of pride in who they are, it helps to offer a different basis from which to re-imagine a future that is their own, free of war.

Hopeful Harvest: Food and Agriculture as a Foundation for Peace in Northern Afghanistan | Solutions

NY Times Article- Schoharie NY

A few plein-air tables under the maples and the Norway spruces behind the Daughters of the American Revolution hall in Schoharie becomes a cafe, and a symbol of resilience, resistance, and recovery. An interesting take on Greening in the Red Zone, both in terms of the site selection under the trees, and because of the important, obvious, and oft overlooked links between food and  survival, symbolically and otherwise. See the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/dining/makeshift-cafe-sustains-storm-ravaged-schoharie-ny.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&src=dayp