Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-A New Direction on Research at the USDA? The Experts Weigh In
-USDA and EPA Pushing Coal Ash for Growing Crops
-‘We need to pay farmers … to protect nature’
-Economic crisis exposes fragile global food system, new UN report says
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.
-Conservationists rip water policy, quit state panel
-Finding Water from Outer Space
-Melting Himalayan ice prompts conflict fear
-How Can Bright Green Cities Thrive Without Capital?
-A Blueprint for Restoring the World’s Oceans to Health
-Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None
-The Second Wave of Mining
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.
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.
-The ecocidal moment
-“All will be done again as it was in far-off times”
-(Re)Imperializing Anthropology and Decolonizing Knowledge Production
-Do Increased Energy Costs Offer Opportunities for a New Agriculture?
There’s a lot more to know about weeds than most people expect. In fact, there are quite a few surprises there if you become familiar with the plant life growing in an uncultivated field—especially on a vacant city lot.
-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
Upon the first global recession influenced by the peaking of oil extraction and record high prices, the question for “peak oilers” arises: does peak oil and energy decline mean great profits for modernizing industry, or is peak oil the beginning of huge changes in lifestyle toward sustainability after societal collapse? Those were the two main concerns at play at the fifth annual meeting of the U.S. chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA), in Denver, Oct. 11-13.
-SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling (and some other stuff)?
-Edward Burtynsky’s Oil
-Is Michelle Obama about to take on Big Food?
-Carolyn Steel on How Food Shapes Our Cities
If you have some land, even an acre, you have the means for making at least part of your income and in the process gain a more secure life. Surely that is what it means to “have a job.” Our society hasn’t endorsed that notion yet, but I think that we are evolving toward that kind of economy.
