One year ago yesterday, president Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “It included a mixture of tax cuts for businesses and families, infrastructure building and green investments, aids for states and localities, and help…

It is February 16th ten years after the turn in millenniums. I live in Northern California where we have what my seminary professors called a Mediterranean climate – we live in basicaly the same kind of weather as the people…

PC(USA)’s Peacemaking Program and Environmental Ministries offices are leading a Travel Study Seminar to Armenia from November 1-12, 2010. On the trip you will: Explore how people of faith care for God’s earth. Visit reforestation sites and pristine forests in…

Fred Bahnson, husband of Food and Faith Blog author Elizabeth, who wrote “The Way of Manna” back in November, wrote this from warm, sunny Florida for the Christian Century. “It was like stepping into the Nigerian village I grew up in as a missionary kid, albeit one with lots of white people. Instead of running on oil, this place derived its energy from contemporary sunlight; aside from a golf cart here and there, everyone walked or rode bikes. At the moment I am sequestered under a clump of bamboo, hiding from the mid-afternoon Florida sun with a tour group of snowbirds…” Read Fred’s article “Farm School” about ECHO. You just might end up there..

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food. Link local farm production to local consumption. Investments in local processing and storage facilities will allow for large scale consumers (e.g. schools, hospitals, small colleges) in rural communities to buy locally produced goods from smaller scale operations. These new and niche markets will leverage the wealth generated from the land, create jobs and repopulate rural communities.

Last week I saw Michael Pollan on Oprah Winfrey talking about local, sustainable food. He was explaining the health benefits of avoiding processed foods and buying produce at your local farmers market. And this was on one of the highest…

Some may think saving rhubarb is going a little too far, but nothing is too small to save. If you like pie, jam, and wine, rhubarb might just be right for you. It grows without chemicals, lasts for years when…

A cloned Turkish Angola kitten gives off a red fluorescence glow while an ordinary one appears to be green in this picture taken under ultraviolet light at a laboratory of Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, Wednesday. The cloned cat’s genes were modified with a fluorescent protein.

Yesterday I read the story of Lucy in a local newspaper. For 10 years Lucy lived locked in the basement of a house disturbingly close to my own. She was forced to do household chores for no pay and barely…

Take a drive a little northeast of Rockford, Illinois, along a long, bumpy, straight, and narrow road tracing a section line to Angelic Organics, an idyllic symbol of how important the small farm was to the American economy — and health. It is a beautiful farm with rich and lush fields of vegetables and herbs. But walking past the fields you will see a difference immediately: chickens ranging freely between the rows of vegetables (insect control), and huge boxes of black earthy soil percolating with glossy earthworms (fertilization). Angelic Organics is not just a symbol of a by-gone era.