Food & Water

The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest

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I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn.

Sustainable Agriculture Whitepaper (excerpt)

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Developing a sustainable agriculture is a necessary part of creating a sustainable society. The root of the word sustainable is the verb, to sustain, which means to nourish and prolong. In social and environmental contexts we say something is sustainable when we believe it can persist indefinitely without exhausting resources or causing lasting damage.

Crop to Cuisine: October: Beer, Health & the WFP

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Crop To Cuisine goes global with Oktoberfest in Palestine & The 2009 World Food Prize. We also take on Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a report connecting diet and breast cancer. Finally we hear from the CDC about their newly released findings on “state by state” fruit and veggie consumption. All that and more.

Equal Time with Carl Etnier: Rural Vermont’s New Directions, Plus Produce: The New Urban Agriculture

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Brian Moyer, the new executive director of Rural Vermont, explains how the organization plans to follow up on their legislative successes by making sure the laws about raw milk, on-farm slaughter, and other aspects of farming are working as intended and helping family farmers. City planner and designer Darrin Nordahl says cities, towns, and villages should not only let people grow food in the margins of urban areas, they should pay their staff to grow food on public land. Nordahl talks about his new book, Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture.

Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: World Food Day and the Problem of Equity

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Yesterday was World Food Day, and the media dutifully paid a tiny bit of attention to the 1 billion plus people who suffer from chronic hunger. All the usual problems were trotted out, including multiple quotations in many media from the Australian National Science Director Megan Clark’s observation that to feed a growing population, we will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in all of human history.

Nations & resources – Oct 16

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-India’s quest for uranium
-Putin’s China Visit Helps Russia Become Global Energy Supplier
-Iraq cuts foreign deals for major boost to oil output
-The U.S. military’s battle to wean itself off oil
-What’s yours is mine
-Big Oil Front Group Fights for Tar Sands
-Saudis Seek Payments for Any Drop in Oil Revenues