Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
Happy Easter! Ok, this might only be food policy in the most removed sense, but I discovered shocking news the other day, and it is extremely topical today: Did you know that chocolate surprise eggs (such as the ones produced by Kinder) are outlawed in the United States? Apparently, the sale and import of the … Continue reading The Legality of Kinder Surprise Eggs…
I was fascinated by this blog post by the blog “Food Governance“, which refers to and summarizes the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food’s report on his mission to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
I just finished my exams on Thursday and am going to be travelling to the airport this morning to explore Bulgaria and Romania with my friend! The prospect makes me feel like this approximately: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rDvnUiO-LAk] I have prepared a couple of posts that will go up while I am gone, though it won’t be as often … Continue reading Holiday Break!
Cuba is such a funny case: according to this article, agroecological farming principles are the norm, more than half of its farms use organic production methods, and it is a leader in urban agriculture – but yet, most of these developments are less the result of a coordinated policy shift than a survival mechanism that … Continue reading Cuba At The Crossroads
The challenge with large governments (such as the USA’s) is that they produce huge packages of legislature that only few individuals can understand in its entirety. Thus, everybody focuses on what they are interested or specialized in, and there is the potential to slip things in that legislators aren’t aware of or don’t understand the … Continue reading What Is The "Monsanto Rider"?
Recently, I discovered (via my friend Tereza’s blogpost) an awesome Czech invention that supports self-sufficiency, community and bread-baking in the form of a sourdough map! In order to make sourdough bread, you need to make a pre-ferment (also called starter or lévain), basically a mix of flour and water, which you then expose to the air … Continue reading Sourdough mapping
In my Sustainability Economics class, we also talked about sustainable food choices (one of my favorite topics!) and the nuts and bolts of doing a Life Cycle Analysis of a particular product or diet “from cradle to grave”. Life Cycle Analyses try to assess the environmental impacts of certain behavior, for example the consumption of … Continue reading Can the Mediterranean Diet Save the Planet?
In preparation for my Sustainability Economics exam on Thursday, I decided to combine the necessary with the fun and write about a concept that I will hopefully remember come Thursday – the Planetary Boundary framework championed by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Rockström starts with arguing that the planet has moved into the … Continue reading Transgressing the Earth's Boundaries
“The food crisis can only be conquered with even greater intensification.” “A new ‘Green Revolution’ to match that of South-East Asia is needed to improve yields further.” “Organic farming is a cute idea, but it will never replicate the yields of conventional agri-business.” Who hasn’t heard those arguments? And felt defeated by the challenge to … Continue reading Research Breakthrough: Less Inputs = More Yields?!