Our environment is changing. When we consider the state of our environment and the various negative impacts that have taken place over time, particularly those caused by human consumption and fossil fuel emissions. However, changing how one product is produced or farmed can have more of an impact than people realize. Various grains are extremely versatile and used in different… Read more »
What will happen- ecologically, politically, and economically- as our world’s water sources are depleted? Water is connected to agriculture through grain production; this means that water shortages around the world, due to climate change, desertification, and over-exhaustion of aquifers will produce food shortages as well. While groundwater continues to diminish through overuse and drilling into aquifers becomes more energy and… Read more »
In Amanda Little’s essay, Power Trip, she examines the ways in which fertilizers, coupled with the seed engineering breakthroughs of the Green Revolution have brought us agricultural abundance. And yet, being able to feed an expanding population has also produced many practices that have put strain on the environment and come at a cost to other living systems. Little explores… Read more »
This was such an engaging course looking at the politics, policy, and environmental consequences of the world food system. It is so much more complicated and interconnected than I had imagined. I think my biggest takeaway is the connection between industrial agriculture practices and climate change. Industrial farming has removed people from being connected to the land. Monoculture production of… Read more »
As I went to get breakfast the other morning from the hot bar at Whole Foods I noticed something that I never took notice too before. The scrambled eggs have citric acid listed in the ingredients. I had just read Amanda Littles essay, “Cooking Oil: How Fossil Fuels Feed the World (and Energy Shortages Starve it).” I was still trying… Read more »
I know plenty of people who I consider to be smart and reasonable who believe that any critique of genetic engineering of seeds is unfounded conspiratorial thinking. I have long found this notion unfair. I don’t think that genetic engineering is wrong on principle. However, I think it is too soon to know the effects on our health and the… Read more »
In the poem On Work, Khalil Gibran’s prophet Almustafa counsels, You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. Over the past ten weeks… Read more »
I was shocked to learn about the intricate systems of rainwater harvesting in India. Not only that, but how long they have been place, some of the for hundreds of years. Anupam Mishra mentions in his TED talk titled The Ancient Ingenuity of Water Harvesting that the reasons these systems have been in place for so long, in a place… Read more »
Much of the conversation over GMOs within the US natural food industry has focused on issues of labeling and the dangers that multinational corporations like Monsanto pose to organic farmers. For many, the 2008 documentary Food Inc. was their first exposure to the dark side of these high-tech advances, detailing how intellectual property lawsuits from agrochemical firms have put some… Read more »
China is the world’s largest agricultural producer and they are dependent on nitrogen based fertilizer. Reducing the use of fertilizer to minimize the ecological impact, while reducing costs to the farmer, and still producing the greatest yield, seems like common sense. Studies have shown that China uses 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer production, over half of what other countries… Read more »