From my friend Nirmal Basu, the guiding spirit of the remarkable community environmental group, Exnora, comes a call to battle what he calls Land Cancer. Land Cancer is nothing more than the degradation and diminution of fertile land as pollution and intensive cash farming damage it and large corporations buy it up in huge tracts that they convert into housing developments.  Basu has a simple but tremendously effective program for individual and community response – practice Exnora. By this he means do the simple things you can do in your own backyard, house, or even flat to green your environment.

There’s an immediate reason why you should.  Food prices are set to mount seriously over the next years.

Some of his ideas:

Compost at home to make soil fertile

Use waste water in your garden

Grow a garden on your window sill…or on your terrace…..on a parapet..or on a gate

or even a water pipe

More ideas here at this Home Exnora flyer

and at the Exnora website.

I should quality this post: if things continue in the same line as they have so far, food prices are set to go up. As usual, we tend to project things in a linear fashion from our current perception of the past (itself inaccurate). It’s a form of modeling especially unsuited to predictions about large, complex groups – and there are very few things larger and more complex than the global economy – if you can even talk of it as a single entity. But that said, even if some technological advance or improvement in distribution or networking leads to lower food prices in the future- we’ll still have a greener environment, fresher air, and a more restful living space. All good things.

And no government money involved.

I came across something similar here in the US that was started by a retired engineer – Square Foot Gardening.

I plan to try my hand at it since I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. A nice box of basil, coriander, and mint on the desk makes an office decor I can live with.