Planet Farm
By Rob Wallace, New Internationalist
As industrial agriculture encroaches into the last wild places of the Earth, it’s unleashing dangerous pathogens. Time to heal the metabolic rift between ecology and economy
Tag: industrial agriculture
A New Aesthetic
By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life
It is a mistaken aesthetic that dictates how people see and judge the land around them, that tells us what looks beautiful and productive and “American” – that is, efficient, high-tech, and gleaming with the promise of the future.
How Much does Cruelty Cost?
By Jody Tishmack, Anima/Soul
Some people may have caught a recent news story about animal abuse at Fair Oaks dairy farms in Indiana. The video was part of an undercover operation to show how animals are really treated at Fair Oaks Farms.
What To Do About Predictions of Imminent Food Collapse
By Sandra Lindberg, System Change not Climate Change
Yes, the way of life we’ve known is coming to an end. Yes, civilizations fall. I for one will fight for our species and our planet’s survival until I can no longer do so.
Nitrogen Crisis: A Neglected Threat to Earth’s Life Support Systems
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
The rift in the nitrogen cycle is a major threat to the stability of the Earth System. This and subsequent articles will discuss how the natural cycle works and how it has been disrupted in the Anthropocene.
The Tide is Turning, as Farmworkers Fight for Organic Agriculture
By Virginia Ruiz, Eugenia Economos, Food Tank
Right now, farming with toxic pesticides is the norm. But, for the health of all people from farm to table, we need to create a food system where organic is for all. The solution is here—we just have to grow it.
Broiler Chickens: The Defining Species of the Anthropocene?
By Ian Angus, Climate and Capitalism
An important new paper, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (RSOS), makes a convincing case that modern broiler chickens are a “distinct and characteristic new morphospecies ….[that] symbolizes the unprecedented human reconfiguration of the Earth’s biosphere.”
Intensive Agriculture Driving Worldwide Decline of Insects
By FCRN Staff, Food Climate Research Network
Over 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction over the next few decades and 75% to 98% of insect biomass has already been lost, according to this review of the current state of knowledge about insect declines, with habitat loss through conversion to intensive agriculture being the main driver. Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are also driving insect declines.
A Regenerative Food System is Both a Means and an End
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
Continued intensification of the food system will lead to increased pressure on nature as well as the continued erosion of food culture.
Locals Unite to Stop Hog Farms From Polluting Their Community
By Wyatt Massey, YES! magazine
So Sue George organized her neighbors and created a legal document to protect her farm, and town, from the large-scale hog operations she said are destroying a way of life and polluting the environment.
‘Monster’ Turns Our Farmers into Serfs and Sharecroppers
By Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative
Industrialized agriculture prioritizes efficiency and quantity over human and ecological flourishing: it pushes farmers to plant more commodities over greater swaths of land,
To Beef, or Not to Beef, That is the Question (Act 1)
By Paul Alward, Resilience.org
In the recent debate about beef and it’s impact on the environment there are two views. There are those who view cattle as greenhouse-gas belching planet destroyers, while others depict them as benevolent carbon sequestration machines.