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Don’t forget about No Impact Man who’s still going strong:
Meet real needs, make sustainable products
Here’s a question: if the need for a product has to be created by the manufacturer, if aggressive marketing is required to convince people to buy the product, can the product, [...]
Archive for the ‘agriculture’ Category
Reviving this blog
Posted in agriculture, big business, sustainability on July 2, 2008 | 1 Comment »
food or conservation?
Posted in agriculture, biodiversity, food, sustainability on April 9, 2008 | 3 Comments »
In the New York Times, As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program:
Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. They are spurning guaranteed annual payments for a chance to cash in on the boom in wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. Last fall, [...]
food riots
Posted in agriculture, economic justice, sustainability on April 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Guardian reports: “The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,”…
Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said “many more people will suffer and starve” unless the US, Europe, Japan and other rich countries provide funds. He said prices of all [...]
keep your eye on the real food
Posted in agriculture, big business on March 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
If you have just two minutes, you can read these two very short pieces from Earth & Sky and meet Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, UC Berkeley:
What does it mean to ‘eat scientifically?’
Michael Pollan predicts a food culture revolution
India’s debt-ridden farmers committing suicide
Posted in agriculture, big business, economic justice, globalization on March 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
by Jason Motlagh, San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service.
While India’s economy surges forward on the crest of globalization, thousands of farmers are taking their own lives every year to escape mounting debt and an uncertain future. … at least 87,567 farmers committed suicide between 2002 and 2006.
In the 1960s, India underwent a green revolution in favor [...]
US timber industry
Posted in agriculture, big business, carbon regulation, forests, sustainability on March 19, 2008 | 3 Comments »
“Michael Roddy describes the ecological costs in terms of CO2 emmissions related to choices that builders make when they choose what materials they will build with.” This page has the link to the Roddy’s 10 page PDF.
Excerpts:
…wood framed houses do not last beyond two or three generations without requiring extensive maintenance. In many cases, [...]
We Feed the World
Posted in agriculture, big business, biodiversity, economic justice, globalization, oceans, population pressure, sustainability on March 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The 2005 Austrian documentary film We Feed the World has been showing on the Sundance channel in the US recently. (IMDB entry.) It’s incredibly well done.
WE FEED THE WORLD is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow [...]
biofuels
Posted in agriculture, big business, biodiversity, biofuels on March 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Emmett Duffy, Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, at the Natural Patriot has several recent posts on biofuels:
The promise of biofuels: a lot of hot air?
Biofuels and sustainability: the pros weigh in
Amber waves of . . . automotive fuel?
He also points to the collection [...]
big downside to biofuels
Posted in US politics, agriculture, biofuels, sustainability on March 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
At Grist Tom Philpott asks, “Why are biofuels losing steam in Europe — and barreling ahead in the U.S.?” His short essay neatly ties up the connection between growing crops for biofuels, the need for fossil fuel based fertilizer to do that, how it is increasing the removal of rain forests, and how the [...]
catastrophe in Africa?
Posted in agriculture, climate change, economic justice, failed states, population pressure, sustainability on February 18, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Paul Chefurka in Africa in 2040: The Darkened Continent:
All in all, the future of Africa is beyond grim when one looks out just a decade or two. Declining food production, rising food prices, shrinking economic activity and a continuation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic paint a picture of human distress that is beyond endurance.
The scale [...]
Factory Farm Incentive Program
Posted in agriculture, big business on February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In the Farm Bill, a Creature From the Black Lagoon? by Andrew Martin in the NYT.
… you may be surprised to learn that your tax dollars have helped pave the way for the growth of these livestock megafarms by paying farmers to deal with the mountains of excrement that their farms generate.
… in [...]
Monsanto’s biotech-seed dominance
Posted in agriculture, big business on February 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Hope Shand of the ETC Group, a civil society organization based in Montreal, said that as the number of biotech acres has swelled, the seed industry has shrunk.
“In 2006, Monsanto’s biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the total world area devoted to genetically modified crops,” she said. “This is a staggering [...]
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