agriculture
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Cage-free Croissan’wich, anyone?
This has been a big week for animal-welfare advocates, as BK now commits to buying eggs and pork from animals that have not been raised in cages. There are big environmental impacts here as well, although I'm still trying to sift through them.
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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 […]
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Is humane meat better for the environment?
According to this NYT article, one of the country's biggest restaurant moguls has decided that he will only sell humanely treated animals in all of his restaurants. This is, in one sense, a great victory.
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Bill McKibben questions thinking as usual when it comes to climate.
The old thinking, as author and thinker Bill McKibben explains in today's LA Times, goes like this: bigger is always better, growth is good no matter what, and a booming stock market is the ultimate measure of our success.
McKibben illustrates the kind of lopsided priorities that naturally flow when we're ruled by the bottom line, pointing to a scarcely-reported White House report that said the U.S. would be pumping out almost 20 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than we did in 2000, our contribution to climate change going steadily up -- against all warnings to the contrary.
That's a pretty stunning piece of information -- a hundred times more important than, say, the jittery Dow Jones industrial average that garnered a hundred times the attention. How is it even possible? How, faced with the largest crisis humans have yet created for themselves, have we simply continued with business as usual?
New thinking, by contrast, might go something like this: measure what matters.
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Metamucil’s bold new marketing, uh, move
Most people know intuitively that when they eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, they feel better and probably even look better. It’s a virtuous circle, and you can try it at home. Eat fresh produce. Feel better. Look better. Crave fresh produce. But the food-pharmaceutical industry (yes, they’re related) doesn’t make much money when […]
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A message from Kenya and Biopact
Over on the Biopact website -- probably the best website for up-to-date international news on bio-energy science and markets -- they have posted an interesting commentary, based on a BBC interview, on how small Kenyan farmers, Mr. Peter Ndivo and Mr. Samuel Mauthike, are affected by the confusion engendered by concepts such as "carbon footprints," "fair trade," and "food miles."
Biopact's message? Buy your vegetables and fruits locally, if you must, but please allow developing countries to supply your biofuels.
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How Archer Daniels Midland cashes in on Mexico’s tortilla woes
Much has been made in the U.S. press about Mexico’s “tortilla crisis” — the recent spike in the price of its definitive corn-based flatbread. Media reports tend to focus blame on U.S. ethanol production, which has surged over the past year, causing the global price of corn to double. The situation stoked the food vs. […]
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And what you can do about it
Ask small-scale, sustainable-minded farmers where they go for tips, and invariably they’ll mention ATTRA, an information clearinghouse funded by the USDA. Just this morning, I went to attra.org to get information on how to make organic potting-soil mix for starting seeds. Like many farmers, I’ve printed out copies of ATTRA’s indispensable guides to cover crops […]
