Permaculture, Kimchi Fried Rice & Regeneration (Repost)
How to grow food without defying nature, an intuitive dish from Roy Choi, and how individuals can collectively heal our planet (#54).
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of information to inspire climate action.
Each Wednesday, you can expect💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate in your inbox.
Hello from northern Vietnam! I spent the past few days weaving through gorgeous landscapes and terraced farms on a motorcycle tour of the Ha Giang loop.
It was eye-opening to see low-mechanization farming first-hand. Here, local ethnic minorities farm dense, diverse plots on steep slopes with animal labor.
In between crop rotations, they aerate the soil. A Hmong farmer introduced me to plowing soil with the help of a cow. Spoiler: it’s harder than it looks.
The locals cultivate a unique relationship with the land. It’s also burning season at the moment, smothering the lush mountains in a light smog. I’m still processing all I witnessed and am grateful for the experience.
After reading Nate Crosser’s post on Climate Victory Gardens this week, I’m resurfacing a post from last year on permaculture.
At the height of WWII the 1940’s, victory gardens produced 40% of the national food supply and rallied community spirit. As today’s intensive farming practices threaten food security – with up to 90% of farmland degraded by 2050 – decentralized food production could be part of the solution.
Amidst the tyranny of centralized agriculture, growing our own food is a revolutionary act. It can benefit both human and planetary health, healing our relationship with the land.
As AI is poised to disrupt many fields – in which 1 employee could leverage AI to do the job of 5 – a displaced workforce could be mobilized towards food production.
Read more below on the potential of permaculture as climate action.
💥 Breakthrough: Permaculture
We love the convenience of fresh fruit, vegetables, and grains at the supermarket. But the agricultural system that produces them is far from sustainable.
Humanity’s methods to produce food over the past century have largely been extractive. Intensive agriculture expects nature to produce like our factories – with monocultures, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizer that oppose nature.
Soils are depleting, earthworms are disappearing, and soil microbiology is dying. If we continue this way, we may only have 50-60 years of farmable soil left.
We can no longer afford to engage in practices that defy nature. And that’s why I’m excited about permaculture.
Permaculture is a holistic philosophy based on systems thinking to grow food in harmony with nature’s principles of diversity, resilience, and reciprocity.
Permaculture is the blend of “permanent” and “agriculture.” It was developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to design agriculturally productive ecosystems that are also naturally resilient.
Permaculture combines practices in ecology, landscape design, and regenerative agriculture to mimic how plants grow together in nature. It relies on 3 tenets:
🌱 Earth care: prioritizing the health and well-being of the planet
👩🌾 People care: ensuring the well-being of individuals and communities
🌾 Fair share: equitably distributing resources and surpluses
Permaculture is adaptable to a wide range of settings, from urban farming to food forests and larger agricultural fields.
If you want to learn more, here are 12 permaculture principles to abide by.
Growing one’s own food is a revolutionary act. It involve taking back control, agency, and independence over a food system whose values we may not align with.
And it doesn’t take as much space as you might think. 800 sqft is sufficient to grow food for a family of 4 year-round. But there’s a caveat: it takes a few hours of effort each day.
Permaculture’s momentum is promising:
🧑🌾 1,000,000+ people are certified in permaculture
🥕 4,000 permaculture projects are regenerating
🌎 140 countries have active projects
(Source: Appleseed)
These projects enable 1,000s of acres of local food production, plant 10,000s of trees, and cultivate 100s more fruit & veggie varieties than intensive agriculture.
We do not need to destroy nature to produce enough food for everyone. Instead, permaculture empowers us to grow food in harmony with nature – fostering resilient soils, protecting biodiversity, and sequestering carbon.
The book recommendation below further emphasizes the importance of regenerative ag and individual food production. Don’t be shy, read on, I won’t stop you.
🥘 Recipe: Kimchi Fried Rice
Fried rice, fried thrice.
Get ready for one of the best crispy fried rice you’ve ever had.
Buttery rice, caramelized kimchi, chili crisps, and an over-easy egg make for a rich and delightful dish. I just finished a bowl of it at the time of this writing and I cannot wait for the next.
Scroll down for the recipe.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: Regeneration
We have a lot of metrics to measure climate change: greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), global average temperatures, ocean acidity (pH), ocean currents, and more.
But the most important part of all climate change metrics is how they affect life on Earth.
Having a metric for biodiversity loss is like a doctor adding ‘death’ to the list of symptoms for a patient. It is not a symptom – it is the very thing we need to prevent.
The opposite of planetary destruction is regeneration.
In a book by the same name, Paul Hawken emphasizes the need to put life at the center of every business and climate decision.
Paul Hawken is also the author of Project Drawdown, a book with 100 proven climate solutions that I recommended in BRB #8. It inspired my climate journey with a breadth of climate solutions we can implement today.
Regeneration focuses on individual climate action. Paul stresses that individuals can and must enact meaningful change in their own life and communities.
I will not sugarcoat there are some tough pills to swallow in this book. This one was a good wake-up call:
From the planet’s point of view, there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem but does nothing… Beliefs do not change our actions. Actions change our beliefs.
I also appreciate how he stresses the importance of climate justice – that resolving the climate crisis depends on creating a healthier and more equitable world for all. The climate crisis is inextricable from global injustice. Regeneration is the answer to both.
If you want to take more climate action, this book will motivate you with the right information, resources, and inspiration. I hope you enjoy it.
A few resources to check out with the book:
Nexus: the comprehensive list of challenges and solutions to end the climate crisis in one generation.
Climate Action Systems (CAS): how to implement climate action you find meaningful, on your own terms.
Some favorite quotes:
Regeneration means putting life at the center of every action and decision.
The needs of people and living systems are often presented as conflicting priorities–biodiversity versus poverty, or forests versus hunger–when in fact the destinies of human society and the natural world are inseparably intertwined, if not identical.
Reversing the climate crisis is an outcome. Regenerating human health, security and well-being, the living world, and justice is the purpose.
Let’s regenerate 🌱
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Kimchi Fried Rice
Adapted from Roy Choi in MasterClass.
Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings):
3 cups day-old rice (ideally short grain)
1 cup kimchi
4 tbsp butter
3 green onion stalks, sliced
1 tbsp chili crisps (I like Laoganma)
1 egg (ideally pasture raised)
Furikake for garnish
Salt to taste
Neutral oil
Instructions:
Make the caramelized kimchi. Add neutral oil to a pan on medium-high, add in 1/2 cup of kimchi, and spread around the pan. Sprinkle with salt. Stir after a few minutes when the color changes. The kimchi will change color and fond will coat the bottom of the pan.
Add in 1 tbsp of butter and stir, then deglaze with a little bit of water. Place in a bowl.
Add neutral oil to your now empty pan on medium-high, then add your day-old rice. Flatten evenly and wait a few minutes. When the rice starts to turn golden underneath, break it up and turn it over, then flatten again to make it crispy.
Add in the caramelized kimchi, raw kimchi, and half of the scallions on top of the rice. Add 3 tbsp of butter and 1 generous tbsp of chili crisps. Mix and turn over, then flatten to make it crispy.
After a few minutes, move the fried rice into bowls to serve.
In your now empty pan (again), add a bit of butter and chili crisps while on medium-high. Then crack a whole egg in the center, and wait for the white to be mostly cooked. Flip over and cook for another minute.
Place the over-easy egg on top of the fried rice, and top with furikake and fresh scallions.
Enjoy with your besties :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier – I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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