Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
Since World Food Day happened recently, I was surprised to learn that the USA celebrate their own Food Day today! Maybe it’s similar to the difference between the Canadian and American Thanksgiving, or between European and North American daylight savings time? I guess globalization has its limits. 🙂 Still, why not celebrate twice? Happy Food Day! … Continue reading US Food Day – How Food Literate Are You?
Following up on yesterday’s post – having to deal with an overpopulation of deer through culling, and the question whether to sell that meat or not -, this TED talk is an interesting alternative approach. This thought came to me after a friend responded to my post that one of the reasons that there are … Continue reading The Opportunities of Rewilding
Happy Saturday! While environmental management had never been the forte of the Soviet Union, its collapse had even more dire environmental consequences, with the abandonment of mineral and chemical factories and the shirking of responsibilities for clean-ups, and the subsequent development of the oil and gas sector by oligarchs that now constitute one of the … Continue reading Weekend Reads – Post-Soviet Contributions to Fight Climate Change
I love information that is being visualized, and this is a particularly interesting assembly of stats on corn production in the US, including its use in ethanol. Also the “ethanol supply” curve shows the huge impact that policies (such as mandatory renewable fuel use) can have on food systems. All the more important to get … Continue reading Fields of Gold: Changes in the US Corn Industry
One of the classes I am taking at the moment is all about marketing environmentally and socially responsible behavior of firms to consumers, and promoting sustainable products in general. One case study that came up which I found thought-provoking was about choice-editing – how much choice should we give consumers, really? We know that consumers … Continue reading How Much Choice Should Consumers Have?
I have to confess that I have been wary of the term “efficiency” in agriculture, since in my mind it is inexorably linked to consolidation, economies of scale leading to factory farming and mono-cultures, and cost-cutting measures that might ignore social and environmental externalities. However, my seminar yesterday made me rethink and re-evaluate – to … Continue reading Does Efficiency Equal Sustainability?
I’m just back from the most inspiring event and am desperate to recap before I forget anything important. I uploaded enough TED talks here that you should be familiar with the format, but for those of you who don’t know, TED conferences are dedicated to “ideas worth spreading” surrounding a particular topic. TEDx events are … Continue reading Recap: TEDxUppsala University (Theme: Resilience)
via The Organic Center (http://www.organic-center.org/), which sounds like a pretty useful resource on organic facts and science in general.
Before I even had this blog, I was writing about an awesome idea that could have redefined how we approach sustainability trade-offs. The story is about the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador, a vast space of virtually untouched rain forest under which large oil reserves had been found. The Ecuadorian government being the Ecuadorian government … Continue reading What's the Value of Not Drilling? The Sad Truth from the Yasuni Experiment: Not Enough.
Uppsala is setting itself up to be amazing in terms of opportunities to discuss issues of relevance to me both inside and outside of the classroom. I am currently auditing a class called “Environmental and Social Responsibility Marketing”, and the teacher is doing a fantastic job in alerting us to opportunities of events that could … Continue reading Recap: Panel Discussion on "Ethics in Food Consumption"