Harnessing the Future
Gina Wertz is a horse and ox teamster. Her animal-powered market vegetables and herbs are grown at Under the Stone Garden on the grounds of Tillers International, a Kalamazoo County working farm and learning center…
agriculture
Corn, Cars and Cows
Putting gasoline blended with corn in your gas tank can increase the cost of food on your kitchen table. That’s the claim of farmers and ranchers who say federal policies mandating corn ethanol production raise the price of feed for American cattle, pork and poultry.
Gauging the urban appetite
The agendas that are set so solemnly for international (or global) food and hunger problems cannot be used at the sub-national or local administrative level, which must analyse its own problems and find practical solutions, All too often, catering sensibly to the food needs of urban populations is ignored by policy makers, while economic ‘development’ (more infrastructure, more financing, more consumption, more personal mobility at the cost of public transport) is welcomed. The provisioning of food and the planning for shortening and localising food supply chains is usually abandoned by public administrators to the ruthless methods of the market
Agriculture headlines
•China’s Bad Earth •Pesticides, fungicides harming bee colonies, UM study says •Can Agriculture Reverse Climate Change?
Climate headlines
•Reuters’ climate-change coverage ‘fell by nearly 50% with sceptic as editor’ •Polar Thaw Opens Shortcut for Russian Natural Gas •Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs
Food & agriculture – June 4
•Breaking the grass ceiling: On U.S. farms, women are taking the reins •The USDA’s Latest Report on Energy Use in Agriculture •More Than Honey •Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China? •Peak Water, Peak Oil …Now, Peak Soil?
Water – June 3
•Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust •How to Save Water-Starved Cities •Water may reshape energy industry •Analysis: China: High and dry •Stressed Ecosystems Leaving Humanity High and Dry
The Serious Challenge of Our Time
We are now forced to address the legality of ecological exploitation if we are to achieve the high law of morality to protect our ecosphere.
Much ado about phosphorus
The problem here is, that we’ve switched from a closed loop system where the waste from the farm house goes into the farm yard and all the phosphorus can recycle, to a linear system where the phosphorus gets mined…
Can Rebulding Local Food Systems Help Promote Renewable Energy?
As soon as we begin using the word “farming” again, all of the implicit associations with farming begin to reemerge in our shared thoughts and language
If Climate Change and Population Growth Are Going to Push Food Prices Up by 50%, What Happens When you Add in Peak Oil?
Nearly everyone is failing to take into account the role of geology, oil and energy limits in their predictions – and we’re racing towards disaster.
The Lives of Others
If you could boil our global problems down to seven words, they might be these: we don’t see where stuff comes from.