Climate Food and Agriculture
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Reflections on community gardens and the legacy of MLK
We don't do King's memory justice unless we acknowledge that his work was profoundly unfinished. The class divide he feared has persisted and, in fact, grown more powerful. Perhaps most insidiously, that divide has entrenched itself in our food system.
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USDA releases new nutritional guidelines for school meals
The fight over the federal school lunch program is really a question of social justice for our times. Do the disadvantaged children for whom the program was designed deserve the chance to eat the same quality food as children from families who can afford to shop at a farmers market?
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Why the banana crisis doesn't make me stop worrying and love GMOs
The banana export market is dominated by a single variety that's being stalked by a ruinous blight, as a recent New Yorker article chronicles -- and even some sustainable-food folks think maybe a little genetic engineering is OK in this case. I take a look.
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Worldwatch report highlights how lopsided discussion is about Africa, food, and biotechnology
How come we hardly see op-eds on what paved roads, improved sanitation, more efficient distribution networks, soil conservation and a reduction in food waste might do for world hunger?
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Getting sugar out of schools means getting it out of milk too, says head of Harvard nutrition
Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, weighs in on the dairy industry's campaign to keep offering kids chocolate milk, despite the array of sugar-related health problems America is facing.
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Learn how truly wild rice is harvested [VIDEO]
Most wild rice that you see at the store is not, in fact, wild. Truly wild rice is superior in flavor, but few have the patience for this kind of painstaking hand-harvesting anymore except Native Americans.
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The ‘food bubble’ is bursting, says Lester Brown, and biotech won’t save us
As food prices spike anew, the pioneering environmentalist has a chilling report about the global "food bubble." I asked him whether policymakers and biotech execs are right that genetically modified seeds are the answer to "feeding the world." His answer? No.
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The world is only one poor harvest away from chaos
Over the last few decades we've created a food production bubble based on overpumping aquifers, overplowing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. The question is not whether it will burst, but when.
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Industrial ag once again demanding free pass to crap in your backyard
What do vast polluting chicken factories on the Chesapeake Bay and genetically modified alfalfa have in common? In both cases, industrial agriculture is freely admitting that it needs to trash its neighbors and surrounding ecosystems to thrive.
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Boycotting bluefin isn’t enough — time to turn on the siren
The Center for Biological Diversity has announced a "bluefin boycott." While that sounds (and is) good, the Center's campaign is about far more than simply giving up buying and eating bluefin tuna.
