As we proceed further into the Anthropocene, we are entering the unknown as a planet. Many aspects of our world are behaving less predictably than ever as a result of human impact. Shocks to the complex global food system can come in many forms, from natural disasters to world trade disputes to pest outbreaks. How resilient is our food system,… 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 »
In The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Michael Carolan argues that “free trade is rarely fair” for smallholder farmers competing in the globalized food marketplace. The Fair Trade movement has risen in the last decade as a means of leveling the playing field for the developing world in trade relations. Seattle’s Theo Chocolate is a Fair Trade, bean-to-bar chocolate maker… Read more »
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is persuasive that today’s industrialized agriculture model and the resulting Western diet has led to an American population that is overfed but undernourished, eating more calories than ever before (on average 300 more per day than in 1985) and showing alarming rates of diet-related disease including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and cancer. [1] In… Read more »