Oregon voters in two counties voted against GMOs, against Monsanto. That’s 2 to 1 in favor of protecting organic farmers, communities, farmers and our health from pollan and seeds of the Frankenstein variety.
Vermont has signed the nation’s first GMO-labeling law, effective July 2016 (again, incremental, slide-side change — labels — but it’s something, nonetheless).
Ecological economists such as Herman Daly write that the more full the world becomes, the higher are the social or external costs of production.
Social or external costs are costs of production that are not captured in the price of the products. For example, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico that result from chemicals used in agriculture are not included as costs in agricultural production. The price of food does not include the damage to the Gulf.
It has been over ten years since Wisconsin endured a kind of deer holocaust. The terminal deer and elk disease, chronic wasting disease (CWD), descended upon its deer population with such vengeance officials declared “CWD eradication” zones in which fauns and does would be killed before bucks. Thousands of deer carcasses were stored in refrigerated trucks in La Crosse while their severed heads were tested for CWD.
It is no secret that in the war against meat pathogens in commercial U.S. meat production, the pathogens are winning. The logical result of the tons of antibiotics that Big Meat gives livestock (not because they are sick but to fatten them) is clear: antibiotics that no longer work against antibiotic-resistant diseases like staph (MRSA), enterococci (VRE) and C.difficile.
The Greenhorns, which publishes The New Farmer’s Almanac for the Year 2013, was founded in 2007 to support thousands of young farmer’s who are leaving US cities to start small scale organic farms.
People who know me know that I am forever grumbling, “Thousands of years from now, scientists will shake their heads and say, ‘too bad about those people back at the end of the twentieth century. They didn’t eat enough fat.’”
The obesity epidemic began around 1977, the year the low-fat diet was first recommended. It was also around the same time that I had my first farm, cow, goats, pigs and chickens. I guess I didn’t get the memo. Our diet included whole milk, red meat, tons of butter, cheese and lard-infused pies.
The “warming of the Arctic” could become one of the greatest catastrophes in human history, even exceeding the notoriety of Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan. Likely, it will impact more people than the combined effect of those brutal leaders. In fact, global warming may eventually be categorized as the greatest threat of all time, even greater than the Black Death’s 75-to-200 million dead, circa 1350.
The airliner banked gently to the right, obtaining a smooth and steady line above the ocean of cloud beneath them. They moved quietly over the “breadbasket” of America—the great Midwest and its fathomless plains of cornfield and soy and cereals—on its way to St. Louis, Missouri. Karl and Erica sat beside each other, both pecking away at their laptops. Erica’s face was a frieze of brutal concentration, her fingers a series of knives stabbing the MacBook Pro repeatedly. Karl was gentler on his machine, largely because he had nothing to do.
In California, where most of the food eaten in this country is grown, the painful drought is being addressed in a number of ways. One is that waste treatment water is being turned into drinking water.
As noted in the Mother Jones article “It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?!”, according to 2010 figures, the average daily water use, not including for farming, of one person living in Palm Springs is more than 700 gallons a day.
I remember seeing the bumper sticker “Coexist” for the first time sometime in the 90s. I thought then, and still do, that forging all the letters from spiritual symbols was pretty clever, while still being meaningful and respectful. You’ve seen the bumper sticker before, you know you have.
It’s often paired with the popular classic “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost,” or (on my Top 10 List) “You Cannot Simultaneously Prevent and Prepare for War.”
