Civil Eats tips us to a new exhibit at the National Archives on the role of the US government in food supply and production, "What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?" As Civil Eats points out, the exhibit glosses over the darker aspects of industrial agriculture and the role of corporate lobbyists in shaping our diet (flavorless example from the exhibit: "The result … Continue reading Government’s Role in the Food Supply
Category: agriculture
Family’s First Vegetable Garden
Before Weeding I’m in Michigan for two weeks and while I’m here, my sister and I are planting a vegetable garden beside my parents’ house. My grandparents are no longer around, but when they lived with us my grandpa protectively tended all the flowers in our yard, erecting a fence near his section when we got a … Continue reading Family’s First Vegetable Garden
Tambo: Life Inside a Rice Field
Tambo in Magome, Japan NHK World aired a 2-hour special on Sunday examining a year in the life of an organic rice field in Japan. Through hypnotic time-lapse sequences and patient cameras, the show captured the incredible diversity of plants and animals that make up the "rice ecosystem" as well as the steady growth of … Continue reading Tambo: Life Inside a Rice Field
Organic for the Sake of Farm Workers
The Washington Post hosted an event entitled “The Future of Food” last week at Georgetown University. Speakers included all the big names in sustainable ag – Eric Schlosser (who just published an article defending "foodies" from calls of elitism), Wendell Berry, Marion Nestle, Vandana Shiva, and… the Prince of Wales?! (who knew? And fresh from … Continue reading Organic for the Sake of Farm Workers
Book Review – “Nature’s Matrix”
The park system is the prevailing model for biodiversity protection in the world - think Teddy R. and the US National Park Service; think Tanzania's Selous National Park, the biggest in the world. Armed guards, strict rules, "nature here, humans there". Biologists have long recognized that local extinctions were common, even in these big, dynamic … Continue reading Book Review – “Nature’s Matrix”
Women Farming
Lately, I can't get my hands on enough about sustainable farming. Was it the Deepwater Horizon disaster that sent me into this frenzy? The fact that agriculture accounts for 40% of oil use in this country? Maybe that's part of it. Yesterday I read NGO Concern's report about women marginal farmers and the disheartening statistics:• … Continue reading Women Farming
Sustainable Food Security
The UNEP’s recent report, The Environmental Food Crisis, outlines seven ways to improve human food security (I’ve paraphrased here):1) Implement tougher price regulations to minimize crippling price fluctuations.2) Remove subsidies from “first generation” biofuels (eg, crops like corn, soy, sugar, etc.) to encourage the use of “higher generation” biofuels (ie, the stuff people were going … Continue reading Sustainable Food Security
Haiti’s Trees
The earthquake in Haiti has brought renewed attention to its most serious environmental, and perhaps economic, problem: the lack of trees. By the end of the 20th century, 98% of the trees in the country had been cut down, mostly to produce charcoal for cookstoves. This accelerated desertification, droughts and erosion, making it harder to … Continue reading Haiti’s Trees
Costs of Cotton
One of my favorite books is Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia by Tom Bissell. I purposely sought out a book on Uzbekistan because it was a place I’d never heard much about. At the center of the story is one of the worst environmental disasters in history – … Continue reading Costs of Cotton
Apple Forests
This is a juicy image: miles and miles of apple trees. Orion Magazine published a great story on the origins of the world's apple varieties in the Kazakh mountains. Some passionate local conservationists are attempting to catalog and save the trees from homogenized varieties and urban development. Preserving these ancient plant varieties is an important … Continue reading Apple Forests
