Books

Fundamental Permaculture Books: (there are many other great ones beyond these but these are a great foundation to get started.)

  • Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway - A great introduction to Permaculture Gardening and Permaculture's Principles. The best selling Permaculture book for good reason

  • The Permaculture City by Toby Hemenway - A great book applying permaculture to our cities, an inspiration for the Symbiotic Cincinnati Coalition. The energy section alone is the first book (Chapter 7) in print to tackle this uniquely Permaculture perspective to energy and the Fossil Fuel Era we all live in. Symbiotic Cincinnati Coalition is designed to build that resilience from each of us out into our community.

  • The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins is a great book that addresses the energy challenge through Collective Social Design processes and Permaculture practices. 

ARTICLES

Ecology, Energy & Alternative Agriculture: a New Synthesis

by R. Alan Wight Ph.D. and Braden Trauth MDes

This article traces our history, going from agrarian to industrial through the use of fossil fuel. It then goes further into the development of ecological science as fewer people were required agriculture and found more time to dedicate to other endeavors. It is concluded with the development of Ecological Agriculture, which came about due to our understandings of Ecological Sciences and our discoveries of Industrial Agriculture's failures. Click here for the Article

A Farming & Food Movements History of the Cincinnati Tri-State Region

by R. Alan Wight Ph.D. with John Metz Ph.D.

This interactive-hyperlinked-timeline documents some of the major food, farming, and business-related histories of the Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana Tri-State region.  The region is loosely definedas the three states, with a particular focus on Cincinnati, Ohio and Green Umbrella’s 10-county service area—approximately a 75-mile radius from the city.  There are some references to significant developments in Cleveland, Athens, Purdue, Louisville, and Lexington as well.

Economics

Understanding our Economy is fundamental to understand how we can shift towards a sustainable economy. Read & Invest to find out how we can move beyond these cycles

  • The Story of Stuff: A Short Video on the hidden costs of our cheap consumer economy. It succinctly points out the point where we all become vulnerable, which was when we left our family farms (recently or generations ago) 

  • The Light Bulb Conspiracy: A Documentary sharing about Planned and Perceived Obsolescence in products and goods. It has a conspiratorial bent, however the truth is if we stop buying products and don't have resilience as laid out by The Symbiotic Cincinnati Coalition Directives, we all end up hungry, cold and homeless. Thus the need for Planned and Perceived Obsolescence to keep people employed at the expense of system that gives us life, Ecosystems, comes from the insecurity and lack of ecological resilience in our homes and communities. 

Invest

Investing in Quality, long lasting products: The Symbiotic Cincinnati Coalition we head up lays out directives to address the issues laid out by the videos listed under Economics and how we can build eco-nomic and eco-logical resilience from our homes out. 

  • Consumer Reports Magazine: Investing in quality long lasting products

  • Patagonia: This company is dedicated to a Regenerative Future through clothing and food. They put their money where their mouth is.

  • Buying locally sourced high quality, long lasting products is fundamental to