Food & Water

Understanding the Agricultural Landscape

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In this episode Crop To Cuisine explores several areas that are helping us understand and make decisions about the agricultural landscape. Adam Avery tells us about their team bike ride from Boulder to Durango, and how breweries are doing more than making great beer within their communities. Bill Meyer from the USDA Statistics Service explains the first organic agriculture census. Cindy Torres of the Boulder County Food & Agricultural Policy Council helps us understand the GMO v. Non GMO argument. And Michelle DaPra shares the USDA’s efforts to better understand local food systems.

Phosphorus Matters II: Keeping Phosphorus on Farms

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“Next to clean water, phosphorus will be one the inexorable limits to human occupancy on this planet” wrote Bill Mollison in Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual more than 20 years ago. It is that important that we design phosphorus recycling into our food systems. Phosphorus is an essential element for growing crops and no porridge, chocolate bar or cherry jam can be made without it.

The Two Sides of An Organic vs. Chemical Story

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The photo of stunted corn tells why grain farmers don’t like trees in their fence rows. Don’t like fence rows at all, in fact. The trees suck the moisture away from crops, as you can see. But what’s going on here? The corn in the other photo, just across the fence, growing the same distance from the same trees, is tall and healthy. Why aren’t the trees robbing moisture from this corn?

Can New York State Feed Itself?

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For someone who believes, as I do, that decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuel will eventually make the transportation of food over long distances economically unfeasible, the phrase “local food” acquires a special meaning beyond the usual lifestyle implications. It’s less about maintaining moral purity and more about whether we’re going to have enough to eat.

San Francisco peak oil task force report

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San Francisco was born at the beginning of the oil age, and the city has flourished during an era in which fossil fuels became the foundation of our economy and society…Today, the City and its inhabitants are utterly reliant on fossil fuel energy: 84% of the energy consumed in San Francisco comes from oil and natural gas.

Reality Report: Household and Community Food Security

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This show of the Reality Report discusses household and community food security through local granaries and local currency. The guest is Cyndee Logan of Mendo Food Futures, a project funded by the California Endowment that includes the local, food-backed money called Mendo Credits.