Sure, buying local is getting big, but even I didn’t think corporations would begin attempts to profit off it so soon. Call me naive. Here is a section from an excellent article about the co-optation of local. Even Wal-Mart is getting in on the act, hanging bright green banners over its produce aisles that simply say, “Local.”
Read more »South African farmers suffered million of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of GMO maize failed to produce hardly any seeds. “Monsanto says they just made a mistake in the laboratory ; but we are saying that is (a general) biotechnology failure. You cannot make a mistake with three different varieties of corn”, those were the words of Mariam Mayet.
Read more »ABC News Video comes from City Farmer News (based in Vancouver, Canada) whose main web site Urban Agriculture Notes (www.cityfarmer.org) has hundreds of pages of information about city farming. Published since 1994, it was the first web site on the Internet to promote urban farming. City Farmer teaches people how to grow food in the city, compost their waste and take care of their home landscape in an environmentally responsible way. If you are lucky enough to get to Vancouver, you can visit the staff at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden, 2150 Maple Street, and see how they take care of the urban landscape. You can see their compost toilet, green roof, cob shed, organic food garden, permeable lane, natural lawn, waterwise garden, worm and backyard composter and more.
Read more »Pesticides …on our food, even after washing; …in our bodies, for years; …& in our environment, traveling many miles on wind, water and dust. What’s On My Food? is a searchable database designed to make the public problem of pesticide exposure visible and more understandable. How does this tool work? We link pesticide food residue data with the toxicology for each chemical, making this information easily searchable for the first time.
Read more »There have been many warnings from our past about the looming threat of pandemic influenza emerging from large-scale hog operations. It now appears that six of the eight genetic components in the currently circulating virus are direct descendants of a swine flu virus that first emerged in North Carolina a decade ago. That bug was discovered in August 1998, at a 2,400-head breeding facility in Newton Grove, NC, where all the sows suddenly came down with a phlegmatic cough. Pregnant animals spontaneously aborted their litters.
Read more »a survey of more than 700 residents of California’s Central Valley suggests that people who live near farm fields sprayed with a combination of pesticides have an elevated risk of acquiring Parkinson’s disease.
Read more »DO WE REALLY WANT A GREEN REVOLUTION FOR AFRICA? Voices from Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa, issues a direct challenge to Western-led plans for a genetically engineered revolution in African agriculture, particularly the recent misguided philanthropic efforts of the Gates Foundation’s Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and presents African resistance and solutions rooted in first-hand knowledge of what Africans need.
Read more »Figure out some small or big way to celebrate Earth Day and the glorious gift of God’s Creation. Acknowledge also that with this gift comes responsibility. So contact your members of Congress to call for a national strategy to protect the earth from its most dangerous threat: global climate change. Our values of justice and stewardship compel us to make addressing climate change a national priority. As Christians we are called to proclaim good news to those living in poverty, sharing in Christ’s work of compassion and love. Global climate change poses one of the greatest threats to the most vulnerable among us, especially those who are hungry. Experts warn that changing weather patterns, an increase in pests and disease, and an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events resulting from climate change will lead to widespread crop failures, disruptions in food distribution systems and incite conflict as resources dwindle and people are forced to migrate.
Read more »Swords Into Plowshares has a great post about climate change and resource wars. There are only a few steps from climate change to war. They are unpredictable weather and harvest, environmental degradation, poverty, hunger and desperation. Those are the ingredients that fan the flames of conflict. Climate change must not be ignored or minimized. Not if we want to leave an inhabitable (for humans) planet for our descendents. See more connections between climate change and hunger.
Read more »U.S. working group on the food crisis urges G8 to reject failed green revolution policies for Africa
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