How You Can Help Women Get Land Rights
Published November 12, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Earlier this week I wrote about how women grow the majority of the world's food but own a tiny fraction of the world's land. This major imbalance makes women — and thus families — more insecure and effectively leaves a major segment of daily natural resource users out of our global conversations on issues such as global warming, sustainable agriculture and food crises.
Alert reader David Mastroianni asked what we can all do to help fix this situation. Here are some ideas.
Vote for Your Local Food Heroes
Published November 11, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Edible Communities Publications, which publishes a range of free magazines on local and sustainable food and eating in communities across the nation, is calling all food enthusiasts to vote on their own favorite local heroes.
You have until December 11 to have your say in the fourth annual Local Hero Awards. Visit the Edible Communities Website to cast your ballot for your favorites in the following categories:
- Farm/Farmer
- Chef/Restaurant
- Food Artisan
- Beverage Artisan
- Non-profit Organization
I particularly like the term "beverage artisan." I wonder if my top-notch gin-and-tonic mixing skills might qualify me for that particular title. Hey, I'm local. To my house.
The winners of this year's contest will be announced in January at the annual Edible Communities publishers' dinner in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then each community publication will announce its own local heroes in its spring 2010 issue.
Celebrating our local food heroes and activists is a great way to support the future of sustainable, community-oriented food production. Cast your vote today to let them know you care.
Winners of Ashoka's 'GMO Risk or Rescue?' Competition Announced
Published November 10, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
The Ashoka Changemakers Website, which describes itself as a "community of action where we all collaborate on solutions," runs a range of specific competitions on a wide variety of subject matter. Potential changemakers enter their solutions to the issue at hand, and readers vote on which twenty entries deserve accolades.
A contest of interest to us here, titled "GMO Risk or Rescue? Helping Consumers Decide," just announced its winners after over 14,000 readers helped decide on the worthiest entries.
The grand prize goes to a blog called biofortified, for its entry titled "stronger plants, stronger science, and stronger communication!" A group blog addressing issues of genetic engineering in agriculture and plant biology, Biofortified claims itself to be the most "dedicated effort to discuss genetic engineering on the web." The organizers aim to expand their blogger network to bring the conversation on genetic engineering to wider audiences. These savvy bloggers will receive a grant of $1,500 and a get to participate in a conversation with food journalist Michael Pollan.
The competition's two runners-up are Campaign for Healthier Eating in America and Non-GMO Project. The top three winners have all won an enhanced social media training session with Ashoka and will be mentioned in a one-page ad in the Stanford Social Innovation Review magazine. The 17 honorable mentions will receive a social media training session with Ashoka.
Why Women's Rights Matter to Our Food
Published November 09, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
"Consider the daily life of the world’s typical small farmer," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the closing session of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in September. "She lives in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, or Latin America."
That's right: women grow more than half of the world's food and the lion's share (as much as 80 percent) of the food in developing countries, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Despite their majority contribution, however, women only own 2 percent of the world's land, according to UN WomenWatch. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they toil over day after day.
Surprise! Farmers Grow Hearty Crops to Survive War
Published November 07, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Subsistence farmers in African war zones keep themselves alive in dangerous circumstances by leaning on intuition and age-old farming logic that goes like this: when in tough conditions, reuse whatever field you've got, grow the hardiest plants and when fleeing, take the hardiest seeds with you. Doing this allows farmers to create the crops best adapted to their needs; a surprise stroke of agricultural genius that apparently leaves scientists reeling.
A new study reports the unexpected emergence of hybrid rice in West African countries like Gambia, Ghana, Senegal and Togo, whose African and Asian rice varieties (Oryza glaberrima Steud and Oryza sativa L.) have only previously been interbred in a lab and there produced sterile offspring, according to SciDevNet.
The authors of the study, which appears in this month's issue of PLoS ONE, report that these two species of rice are interbreeding in the fields in part because of disruptions caused by war.
No Farms, No Food
Published November 06, 2009 @ 12:30PM PT
More than being a cute tag line for the organization that employs me, the phrase "No Farms, No Food" represents an often overlooked and forgotten component of maintaining a sustainable food supply.
With all the talk about Genetically Modified seeds, organic vs. conventional agriculture, and the physical and environmental horror of industrialized meat production, the one conversation that is consistently left off the table is protecting the land base that all kinds of agriculture (no matter what your definition of "sustainable" is) depends on.
Despite a surge of interest in farming in the United States, the country continues to lose two acres of farmland every second of every day. This is happening in every state in the country, and is especially significant in urbanized areas that are responsible for 86 percent of the fruits and veggies, and 63 percent of the dairy, produced in the United States.
Global Warming's Evil Twin: Agricultural Land Use
Published November 06, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
The world is stuck on the tracks and there are trains coming in both directions. One headlight represents climate change. The other light is us, a booming global population that needs more and more food every year. One train demands that we preserve our forests, the other that we slash and burn them. One demands that we decrease pollution, the other that we add more and more fossil fuels to our soil.
At least unless we change things -- a lot of things -- very drastically. We are already yanking on the brake of the climate train, though not nearly hard enough. The other train, though, is barreling forward unfettered. Few of us realize the train is being driven by a madman. Few of us realize the massive crisis our global society's inattention to agricultural priorities promises to become unless something is done.
The problem, according to a new essay by Jonathan Foley, professor and director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, is that we will need to double or even triple our agricultural output over the next several decades unless we want a whole heck of a lot of starving people on our hands. But we have to do that without completely destroying our environment.
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