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How money causes poverty (plus war and ecological destruction), and what could replace it

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Exchange has always been part of the human story, whether between individuals, tribes or nations. Some people have what others don’t, due to geography or skill, and exchange is a means of getting what you don’t have, and giving what you have a surplus of.

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Farm Hack Cover Crop Roller Open Source Agriculture

Farm Hack : growing innovative open-source agriculture

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In response to the pervasive reach of the global agro-industrial complex, growing numbers of farmers across the world are coming together as co-operative organisations to promote and protect small-scale organic food production and environmental stewardship. We take a look below at some of the groups promoting open source agriculture with farmer driven technologies, spearheaded by the

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Time to ditch the corporate sector in favour of the solidarity economy

Why an economy that’s not dominated by the corporate sector would be much better for individuals, communities and nature

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Lowimpact.org is an organisation that was founded by two people in 2001 because of concerns about ecological damage and what that might mean for the future of humanity. The focus has always been on individual lifestyle change

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Examples of organisation within the non-corporate sector

Let’s build a sustainable, non-corporate world; but what exactly does ‘non-corporate’ mean?

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This is the first of two articles examining the non-corporate sector, and its advantages for ecology, democracy, communities and individuals. Here’s a checklist of the benefits of reducing the reach of the corporate sector, but first, let’s work out what kind of organisations comprise the non-corporate sector.

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Boots and tea

Smallholding with heart: advice about getting and running a smallholding from Janet Jenkins of Cuckoo Farm

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Embarking on a new life in the countryside, away from the trappings of urban existence, is a dream increasingly common to many. This week we interviewed Janet Jenkins about her and her family’s smallholding journey, putting the heart back into the land at Cuckoo Farm.

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Would you like to be a smallholder with the ELC?

New Ecological Land Co-op share offer launched: here’s a chance to help bring about change in land ownership in the UK, and receive 3% interest for your trouble!

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Please share this as widely as you can. I’m on the board of the Ecological Land Co-op, and so I know how much hard work has gone into this – it’s an opportunity for people to shift their money to help change the nature of land ownership in the UK, and receive 3% interest for

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Will we ever reach the point of 'peak car'?

Will we reach ‘peak car’, after which we can begin to reduce the number of cars on the roads?

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As a baby-boomer I have lived through a 50 year period where life has become dominated by and dependent on the use of the private car. I wonder whether other people are sharing my expectation that there will be a very much shorter period, equivalent  to a revolution, where the car moves into the background?

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'Feeding the beast': is democracy obsolete?

Is democracy obsolete, and can we ever achieve it as long as we have to keep feeding ‘the beast’?

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In the West, there’s a word that usually accompanies ‘democracy’, and that word is ‘liberal’. Liberal democracies – that’s what we have in the West. That’s liberal, as in liberty / freedom; and that’s certainly what classical liberalism stood for in its infancy.

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How the corporate goldrush for incineration, gasification and pyrolysis of waste generates more consumption, more waste and more pollution

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‘When waste to energy companies propose to build incineration/gasification plants they stipulate that contracts be in place which lock-in local authorities to providing them with a fixed tonnage of waste over the lifetime of the plant (often about 25 years).

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