Recommended Reading
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.
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.
Today: Live Chat with USDA Official on Farm to School Program
Published November 05, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Sign on to the USDA's live-chat Website at 3 p.m. EST today to join the conversation with US Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan about the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. According to an agency press release, in this, her second chat, she will be addressing the topic of "farm to school," a program centered around serving fresh local produce and other farm products in schools.
The program connects local agriculturalists with new markets for their goods while simultaneously teaching children about regional food systems and healthy eating. "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food," which has a neat Website I previously raved about on this blog, is an effort by the USDA to repair the alienating disconnect between food producers and consumers. The effort is a result of the 2008 farm bill's increasing the agency's ability to promote local food.
You can submit a question or comment in advance of the chat on the Website www.usda.gov/live. Or, if you just want to give the agency a shout-out for all these great local-food-supporting efforts, friend USDA on Facebook at www.facebook.com/USDA.
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng
Monday Breakfast
Published August 10, 2009 @ 07:40AM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- There's a new documentary on Percy Schmeiser's battle with Monsanto, as noted by Charles Lemos, following the 2008 settlement where Monsanto agreed to pay cleanup costs for contaminating his fields.
- Jill Richardson was here in Philadelphia on her book tour last Thursday, the night I figured out something was really wrong with my foot, then she went to Lancaster, PA for the CSA goodness and then it was on to New York, NY.
- The Northeast's late blight hit Paula Crossfield's rooftop tomato garden, and she took the opportunity to talk about the unique financial problem the disease has posed for small farmers growing specialty crops.
- Sens. Boxer and Baucus are squaring off over who'll get to write the Senate version of the House climate bill, and agricultural, coal and oil interests are expected to have even more say over the results. Keith Good at the FarmPolicy blog leaves little hope in his DC squabble roundup that, in spite of the fact that the military is firmly convinced of the threat climate change poses to national security, that our legislators will actually shape up and give us the change we need.
- So, about meat and climate change ...
... But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America not to mention innumerable deer, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, and so on all eating vegetation and in turn being eaten by native Americans, wolves, mountain lions, etc. Did the methane from their digestion and the nitrous oxide from their manure cause temperatures to rise then? Or could there be other contributing factors today resulting from industrial agriculture, factors that change natural processes, which are not being taken into account? It has long been known that when grasslands are chemically fertilized their productivity is increased but their plant diversity is diminished.
A recent study in the journal Rangelands (Vol. 31, #1, pp. 45 - 49) documents how that the diminished diversity from sowing only two or three grasses and legumes in modern pastures results in diminished availability of numerous secondary nutritional compounds, for example tannins from the minor pasture forbs, which are known to greatly reduce methane emissions. Could not the artificial fertilization of pastures greatly increase the NO2 from manure? Might not the increased phosphorus, nowhere near as abundant in natural systems, have modified digestibility? I am sure that future research will document other contributing factors of industrial agricultural practices on animal emissions. The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised. ...
Weekend Compost Roundup
Published July 11, 2009 @ 08:50AM PT
Raiding the internet garden for your intellectual delectation ...
- Nitrates, including those from fertilizers, may be an environmental trigger for Alzheimer’s, Diabetes and Parkinson's Disease. A nutritionist friend of my mom's had been warning our family for years about the dangers of nitrate preservatives in meats, guess she knew something.
- If the nitrate news wasn't bad enough, there is increasing worry about the endocrine disruption potential of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. The endocrine system consists of all your hormone-producing and reproductive glands, so messing with it is understandably serious.
- The meat industry has no desire to have their products further tested for safety, even when E. coli contamination sickens and even kills their customers. The most disturbing line in the article ... "Several weeks later, the recall was initiated."
- Latinos in the US are more likely to be hungry, that is, with nearly 20 percent living in 'food insecure' households, as they're called these days.
- More food policy news, wherein we learn that Whole Foods is going to start testing independently for the presence of GMOs in the brands it carries.
- In 'honor' of the destructive little frat boy punks who smashed a microwave left outside our building for freecycling (a popular custom in West Philly) last night, The Guardian posts this editorial on the resurgence of hand crafting and a culture of waste not, want not values.
- And speaking of screwed up things happening in Philly, there is apparently a club here that tried to enforce a whites-only policy at their pool because black and Latino kids were coming to use it for a summer camp. Seriously!? What f*ing year is this? I mean, sweet jeebus, but that is some embarassing bullsh*t.
Wednesday Brunch: Eat Fast Before It's Gone
Published July 08, 2009 @ 06:35AM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- Worries about a neo-colonial farmland grab continue to grow and will be raised at the G8.
- You probably need to get outside more.
- The Food Safety Working Group is ready, with a lot of new recommendations and a Mike Taylor, to boot.
- How many billion dollar droughts will it take to get the agriculture sector to take global boiling seriously?
- Richard Heinberg talks about the implications of peak oil for agriculture:
Robyn O'Brien: The Unhealthy Truth
Published June 30, 2009 @ 12:00AM PT
I can't call in queer to work today, they don't excuse you for that kind of thing around here, but hopefully I can plead wedding madness in re my brevity of posting. I'm sure at least Robert Wager misses me ;)
Anyway, go read Civil Eats, where Naomi Starkman has interviewed Robyn O'Brien, author of "The Unhealthy Truth," and explainer of why we a) don't need biotech to feed the world and b) would really like to know what we're eating.
You could also check out Jill Richardson's sampler platter of food news. You know you'll like it.
