Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
Happy Earth Overshoot Day! Well, actually, it’s not a holiday. Today, August 2nd 2017, we have used up this year’s biocapacity on Earth – that is, the ecological resources the planet is able to regenerate within a year. All the resources we use from now onward are, in theory, putting us in debt to the … Continue reading Happy Earth Overshoot Day – Earlier Again…
If my readership is anything like myself, you probably spent the last week in alternate states of disbelief and real panic over the election of Donald J. Trump as next US President. Enough analyses have been written about how we got here and what some of the more momentous impacts on a global scale might … Continue reading (Food) Politics after Trump
It stands to argue that Coca-Cola is one of the multinationals that elicits the strongest love-hate feelings by the public. It is vilified for its influence on global obesity rates and its undue influence on public health policies, causes outrage over the fact that the acidity of its soda dissolves egg shells, and produces accusations of hypocrisy … Continue reading Learning from Coca-Cola: Last-Mile Humanitarian Supply Chain Innovations
It seems the international media really started noticing the Venezuelan economic meltdown when the Coca-Cola factory shut its doors because it ran out of sugar. The national beer provider Empresas Polar soon followed, citing barley shortages. So, now Venezuelans are running out of coke, beer, and pretty much any basic commodity. Online videos show people running … Continue reading Economic Collapse: Tracing Where Venezuela Went Wrong
Antibiotic resistance is the number 1 looming health crisis that barely anyone has heard of. Picture this: you get an infection, go to the best-stocked and best-staffed hospital and are given medicine after medicine, with no effect whatsoever. So you die, despite access to the best medical care available. According to the WHO, this is … Continue reading Animal Antibiotics: The New Apocalyptic Threat?
As the year is picking up steam and the dreaded January hangovers are in full force (interestingly, that drop in energy after the first week of ‘I will redo my life!’ also appears in tropical climates), here’s a couple of quick but fascinating reads to keep you from doing what you should be doing. Enjoy! … Continue reading Recent reads
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been on a roll lately with important and inspired yearly foci. After last year’s Year of the Soils, 2016 highlights a much-neglected food group: Pulses. I would venture to guess that it is so neglected that many people don’t even know what it refers to – which … Continue reading Taking The Pulse on The Year of Pulses
“In the face of a rapidly overheating climate, collapsing fisheries, degraded soil, depleted water resources, vanishing species, and other challenges directly related to agriculture, we can no longer afford to pursue a flawed accounting system.” What is the real cost of food? Does the price we pay reflect the environmental impacts, the public health implications, … Continue reading TEEB AgFood: Calculating the Real Price of Food
One of the main activities of Mercator alumni is publishing a German-language magazine called adhoc international that treats global public policy challenges from a practitioner’s perspective. Of course, we couldn’t let the climate negotiations go unnoticed. Thus, the newest issue is all about changing climate and humanity (“Klima und Menschen im Wandel”; pdf), and I contributed … Continue reading Putting Meat on the Bones of a Climate Agreement
I am an unabashed New York Times enthusiast. It’s the only news source that I subscribe to, and its reporting is generally excellent. Thus, once a topic close to my heart is picked up by the NY Times, I rejoice because I look forward to a balanced, informed and insightful analysis. Alas, this is not … Continue reading Imagining A World Without Growth – But Seriously!
