Climate Food and Agriculture

Not — yet, anyway

I know there are Gristmill readers with high hopes for algae-based biofuels. They will enjoy this piece in Popular Mechanics. Here’s the hope: Solix addresses these problems [algae’s finicky growing habits] by containing the algae in closed “photobioreactors” — triangular chambers made from sheets of polyethylene plastic (similar to a painter’s dropcloth) — and bubbling […]

We need to rethink all food based biofuels

The lion's share of biofuel bashing on Grist deals with corn ethanol, because we Americans primarily use gasoline for our cars and ethanol runs fine in them, with few modifications. However, our pals in Europe drive a lot of diesel cars and the biofuel crisis over there revolves primarily around biodiesel. I think it is time we recognize that their problem is also our problem. A comment from Pcarbo alerted me to Monbiot's latest take on biofuels. He has now gone so far as to propose a ...

... moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane.

Also amusing

The Daily Show on cloned meat:

The perils of cooking with greenhouse gas.

The BBC has issued a pretty clear-eyed report on food production and climate change, the podcast of which you can download here. The report makes no brief for sustainable ag, but it does cogently question industrial ag’s ability to “feed the world” as climate change saps water tables and population continues to grow.

Now’s the time to discover the myriad pleasures of growing food

“A natural diet lies right at one’s feet.” — Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution It’s springtime here on my mountain farm, and that means an explosion of activity. We’re starting seeds in one greenhouse, and finishing construction on another. Fields are being tilled, and we’re putting in the very first sugar-snap peas and spring onions. […]

Biofuels force the choice on us

Lester Brown says the diversion is already happening:

Appropriate technology?

Here's an interesting article about a rabbi who converted a bus into a wood-fired matzo bakery ...

Don’t Make Me Pull This Cargill Over

Amazon soy export plant shut down in win for environmentalists Greens did a victory dance this weekend as Brazil forced U.S. agribiz giant Cargill to close a soy export terminal in the country’s Amazon region. The facility has long been the focus of a targeted Greenpeace campaign protesting rapid deforestation of the tropical rainforest — […]

A ‘Maoist insurgency’ in a global information-technology hub?

Did you know that India, hub of the global information economy and destination of untold numbers of outsourced U.S. jobs, is in the grips of a Maoist insurgency? A recent Reuters article referred (a bit casually) to: the Maoist insurgency that has spread to about half of India’s 29 states and has been described by […]

I’m Hot, Sticky Sweet

Vermont’s maple-syrup industry braces for climate change Will warmer winters stop the flow of Vermont maple syrup? That’s the question of the day in the Green Mountain State, where folks worry that climate change will make the $200 million industry — which provides 32 percent of U.S. syrup output — dry up. “I’ve always been, […]