sustainable agriculture
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Small farmers crave horse power
Photo: Donn HewesAsk any 5-year-old: Few tools symbolize the farm like a trundling tractor. In fact, you’d have to reach further back in time to find an equally enduring symbol: the horse. And while there’s little doubt that tractors have revolutionized farm labor and made farms much more efficient than they were in past centuries, […]
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Food Studies: Zombie worms and the ethics of consumption
Biodynamic agriculture may be sustainable and balanced, but it can also seem extremely brutal.
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Super-charming sustainable farming video, featuring Willie Nelson
Okay, so this video was sponsored by Chipotle, but if you can ignore a small amount of logo placement and posturing, it's really adorable. Look at the little propane-canister-looking pigs! Listen to Willie Nelson make a Coldplay song sound genuinely emotional! Watch the rotund farmer guy have a change of heart and let his animals […]
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Airport beekeeping project is a win-win-win
A new project raises bees on undeveloped land near O'Hare Airport, trains ex-convicts in beekeeping, and sells the resulting honey and beeswax.
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Safe, organic food too expensive? Eat less meat
Laments over the high cost of sustainably raised meat, poultry, and dairy products miss the bigger picture: Americans eat too much meat, period.
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Grass is good: Natural meats benefit the economy and family farms
Graham Meriweather's new documentary American Meat celebrates American farmers and their efforts toward a more sustainable food system.
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Floating hydroponic farm makes food with zero waste
Here's an urban farm we'll still be able to use when rising sea levels flood all our cities! Science Barge is a floating organic farm set aboard a barge in the Hudson river.
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Factory farms the only way to ‘feed the world’? Not so, argues Science paper
To “feed the world” by 2050, we’ll need a massive, global ramp-up of industrial-scale, corporate-led agriculture. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Even progressive journalists trumpet the idea (see here, here, and here, plus my ripostes here and here). The public-radio show Marketplace reported it as fact last week, earning a knuckle rap from Tom […]
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15 ways to celebrate agriculture on Earth Day
Agriculture: it doesn’t have to steamroll the environment to be productive. For over 40 years, Earth Day has served as a call to action, mobilizing individuals and organizations around the world to address environmental challenges. Agriculture, often blamed as a driver of these problems, is emerging a solution to environmental problems. It’s a source of […]