food

Eric Ellingsen and Dickson Despommier

Bina Ventkataraman in The New York Times covers vertical farms: "What if “eating local” in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?"

The politicians are even getting into it; Scott Stringer, Manhattan borough president, is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said. “I think ...

Photo of land cleared for cattle in the Amazon by Leonardo F. Freitas

A new report from the Rights and Resources Initiative starkly quantifies the amount of additional land which will have to be put under cultivation to satisfy the demands of a growing world population for food and biofuels.

Land equivalent to 12 Germanys will have to go under the plow
Unless agricultural productivity of land rise sharply—the exact opposite of trends since the Green Revolution and the subsequent introduction of GM crops—an additional 515 million hecta...

Image from hdptcar

Time for another round of good news, bad news. First, the good: According to a weighty new UN report (it's 6,300 pages long and includes submissions from 2,500 experts) uncovered by The Independent, the world stands poised to enter a new era of peace, prosperity and empowerment. Increased democratization, economic and technological advances and medical breakthroughs have the potential to bring millions out of povert...

Tonight, one of our favorite celebrity chefs (from right up the road in Fall River, Mass.), Emeril Lagasse, will be starring in a brand new series on Planet Green. Not one but SIX episodes will debut tonight – BAM! Called Emeril Green, Lagasse will be helping viewers solve their cooking dilemmas and will shares his philosophy for fresh, locally grown foods and inspires consumers by using high-quality produce, seafood and meats.

Picture an ultimate foodie fantasy store. Then drop in some real people who have real culinary challenges

In this day and age we try and consider all of the certifications and seals on the packages of the food we buy. Is it organic? Fair Trade? Wild harvested? Rainforest friendly? Local? What does this all mean anyway? Who is actually growing my food and who is profiting when I buy it?

Most people do not want to contribute to destroying our planet’s ecosystems, nor do people want to support child slave labor in the Ivory Coast when eating their favorite chocolate bar. Yet, somehow, these atrocities are taking place with many, many of the products we consume everyday. Now the question is... Is it possible for our food to be both affordable and not destroy the planet?

...

illustration from Worldchanging

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing and Alex Steffen of Worldchanging got together for coffee and had an idea.

"What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. "

"Imagine these folks...Helping rural landowners apply cli...

In Ontario, Canada, they get a lot of sewage sludge out of the treatment plants; 120,000 tonnes are spread on 37,000 acres of agricultural land. Some farmers love it because it is free, while other fertilizers are getting very expensive; others refuse to touch the stuff. The Star is running a fascinating series on it, starting with the scary ingredients:

"Feces, urine, vomit, blood. Synthetic hormones, heart pills, antibiotics, illicit drugs, Viagra. Bacteria, viruses, E. coli, parasites. Household cleaners, shampoo, solvents, pesticides and traces of arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead, dioxins and flame retardants."

...

According to Sylvain Charlebois of the Kenneth Levene Graduate School of Business, writing in the Globe and Mail, “Food-crisis investigators in the U.S. are in the dark. With more than 1,000 cases of illness reported in 41 states (and two deaths reported in Texas), officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention now believe tomatoes may not be the only culprits in the national salmonella outbreak. Some hot peppers are suspect, too.”

Charlebois notes that “Tomatoes are a logistical nightmare because ...

TreeHugger has covered community supported agriculture many times; one contracts with a farmer for delivery of a season's worth of food. It is great for the farmer, who gets a secure income; it is great for the customer, who gets fresh, seasonal produce. Susan Saulny writes in the International Herald Tribune about a CSA with a twist: shareholders can come out and work the farm.

Shareholder Steve Trisko helps out at Erehwon Farms near Chicago, and says that without his volunteer labor and agreement to share in the financial risk of raising crops, the small organic farm might not survive. "It's very hard for them to make ends...

photo by Ray Witlin/World Bank via flickr

Several African countries have recently begun a program to halt desertification in the Sahel, but even in places where the desert isn’t advancing, agricultural lands face challenges from chemically intensive agricultural methods degrading the soil, overgrazing from cattle, erosion from wind and rain, as well as other sources.

Worldwatch Institute is relaying the gist of a new

Over at greenz.jp we just finished an event tonight with invited guests speaking about their experiences from Hokkaido and the G8 Summit. Clearly, many young participants felt left out of the picture, unless you were a member of one of the NGOs and maybe even got to actually shake hands with a G8 leader. One thought: Susan George, long-time activist and author asked here in Tokyo last week: "How many people have actually read a G8 Summit Document?"

Good questio...

Ten Revelations from Living Off the Grid and Eating Locally in Quebec

If you EVER try going off grid completely and eating strictly locally here are our 10 beat do’s & don’ts.

Don’ts

Don’t try to carry more than one bottle of wine per panier on your bike (La Route des VIins) , unless of course you live in Saskatchewan.

Don’t be in a rush: making fundamental life changes takes time and so does making fires and slow cooking.

Don’t expect clean clothes unless you can find a washboard or a hand/pedal-operated washing machine.

Don’t expect uninterrupted internet access unless your solar panel is better than ours!

Don’t worry about your waistlin...

From Motown to Growtown
The growing international food crisis, coupled with spiralling energy costs, is without doubt causing much suffering. But there is a silver lining – as the unsustainability of business-as-usual becomes apparent, alternatives are beginning to gain traction in mainstream consciousness. Detroit provides the perfect example of the need for change – once the thriving hub of the US motor industry, the city has seen a massive exodus of its population and major industries, leaving vacant plots e...

CalorieLab maps the obesity rate in the United States. What makes Mississippi the fattest state and Colorado the skinniest? It certainly can't be Colorado's love of bicycles, judging by their congressmen. I am told that the love of deep-fried food affects Mississippi and the four fat states surrounding it. Or could it just be too hot and languorous there? And why are Washington and Oregon, where everyone bikes and kayaks to work every day, pleasantly plump compared to Montana and Utah?...

It was the competition to end all competitions; take some food, add some architecture, with a dash of fun and here's what you get. Over 100 top architects worldwide submitted proposals for this jelly mould competition that ends up with the top ten entrants being cast in....jello. Part of the London Festival of Architecture, it's all for a good cause--Article 25,a disaster relief and design charity--and it challenged the architectural soul and notion of structure and technology. Said one (Will Alsop) : "I loved doing this, I had to mental...

One would think that the Corn Refiners Association would be busy enough right now that they could sit back and relax, but instead they are starting a big marketing campaign to beat back the Michael Pollans, Daniel Imhoffs and Richard Johnsons of the world who complain that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is making us fat. They are taking it to the public with a big new $30 million ad campaign, saying that t...

Islanders to Plant 20,000 Fruit and Nut Trees for Security
We’ve already celebrated as the Transition Towns movement reached Australia, but it looks like the people of New Zealand are also getting stuck into preparing for a post-petroleum future. The above video comes from Waiheke Island’s Fabulous Fruit Tree initiative, which is aiming to plant 20,000 fruit and ...

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Though it may be a bit premature to heap too much praise upon duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) -- after all, relatively little is still known about its properties -- the early signs, at least according to a team of Rutgers scientists, seem very promising. A team of plant biologists from Rutgers' Waksman Institute of Microbiology have convinced the DOE to focus resources on the genomic sequencing of the diminutive aquatic plant, claiming it holds immeasurable potential for f...

Vacant Lot is an exploration of land use in inner city areas. As part of the London Festival of Architecture some abandoned and derelict patches of land in deepest east end London have been turned into a beautiful oasis of green (vegetables). Forget about allotments--so far away and hard to get to. Instead, seventy individual bags containing in all a half ton of soil have been distributed to form this instant garden. Working with local residents in a subsidised housing project, the architectural firm

Norwegian carrots - they might not meet KRAV's climate criteria! By color line @ flickr

Sweden's organic food organization KRAV and local-food certifier Svenskt Sigill were supposed to release the first round of climate-certified basic foodstuffs this fall. The organization of Swedish consumers has slowed up the process complaining that a new climate label would confuse and bewilder Swedish consumers, while the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency said opposes a new label for each new environmental problem. The Swedish National Board of Trade said the labelin...

Image from HealthyLivingNYC.

While there are books aplenty today about going green, greening your lifestyle and green for dummies, The Climate Diet is the first to offer you greening solutions in terms of a weight watchers diet. The book also shows how you can not only cut emissions but also save money by cutting out the excess in your life.

The Climate Diet: How You Can Cut Carbon, Cut Costs, And Save the Planet, by Jonathan Harrington, offers readers tips on how to reduce their carbon footprint in areas of their life, such as, heating, transportation, community and home. While it’s a good ‘how to go green’ book, it doesn’t necessa...

We know it sounds like putting a square watermelon in a round hole: but Wal-Mart claims it is the nation's largest buyer of locally grown produce. The scaling of centrally managed industrial agriculture in the USA will be transformed. More changes are coming. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to buy and sell $400 million worth of produce grown by local farmers within its state stores this year, an effort the company says will only grow. One obvious upshot is diversification of the supply chain. Smaller contracts with more farmers & distributors. ...

The Bush administration says it ain't so, blaming high food prices on higher demand from India and China. Brazil's Lula blames record oil prices and rich countries' farm subsidies. John Laumer blames genetically modified crops, among other things. Now a leaked report from the World Bank claims that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%. The Guardian writes: "Senior development sources" say the report was spiked to avoid embarrassing President Bush. "It would put the World Bank in a political...

The article starts off really badly, with a picture of farmer Dan Gibson's modest little farmhouse with a porte cochère big enough to park a combine harvester, and a description of how the former VP of Starwood Hotels raises Angus cattle but spends his spare time in house that "has a theater that wouldn’t be out of place in a Steven Spielberg residence, a wine cellar and a log cabin annex with a magnificent dry stack stone fireplace, a billiards table and a stuffed bear and bobcat glowering down between beams made of North Carolina pine — each beam an entire mature tree."

It gets slightly better though, as Ralph Gardner describes how "In recent years, as the local fo...

jcoffman:

Ok... So I am at the grocery store the other day in the veggie isle. I am waiting for a lady in front of me to finish so I decide to watch her.

She is looking at fresh corn on the cob. They are on sale. 10 ears for $2.00! I thought it was a decent price, and wanted to get some too. She is picking up this corn, turning it, peering cautiously into the top like something is going to jump out at her etc... She looks over and sees the prepackaged corn on the cob, looks back at the fresh one in her hand, and tosses it down, grabs the styrofoam/cellophane wrapped corn and walks off.

I was shocked! First of all, I was saddened by the fact that she CLEA...