Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
Note: I’m back! A year-long PhD-thesis-writing, 4-classes-teaching, sleep-deprived hiatus later, I’m back to comment on pressing issues in food policy and governance as they come my way. First up: a topic dear to my heart – the recurrence of abysmally low coffee prices. This week, coffee Twitter was all up in arms. Futures prices for … Continue reading The Lowest Coffee Price in a Decade
Thesis update: 13,000 words and counting! It’ll be a long slog… BUT nevertheless I recently read a couple of non-coffee related articles and videos that were fun as well as thought-provoking and that I thought I would share. The Secret Life of the City Banana [New York Times] Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash This piece is so … Continue reading What Food Can Tell Us – Three Inquiries
“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
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!
In addition to being a world-famous chef and juror on Top Chef, Tom Colicchio also fights for the right to food on a policy level. Food Policy Action, an NGO he co-founded, scores US policy makers on their voting record on bills related to agriculture, nutrition and hunger. What can we learn from their aggregate results? As … Continue reading Food Policy Action: A Scorecard for Policy-Makers
I’m sure you’ve heard. On Monday, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, published a heavy anticipated report categorizing the consumption of processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans” (Group 1) on the basis of sufficient evidence for colorectal cancer. Additionally, the consumption of red meat was classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A). … Continue reading The Meat-Cancer Link In the Media
“I’ve often wondered how the media would respond when eco-apocalypse struck. I pictured the news programmes producing brief, sensational reports, while failing to explain why it was happening or how it might be stopped. Then they would ask their financial correspondents how the disaster affected share prices, before turning to the sport. As you can probably … Continue reading Indonesia’s Forest Fires: Is Ag To Blame?
I’ve been playing around a bit with Tableau, a data visualization tool that is seriously so much fun! It has great interactivity too, so feel free to play around with it! Embedded on this site! The future is now! Basically, this shows meat consumption data that I downloaded from the OECD by country and region … Continue reading Global Meat Consumption – The Visual
Hey hey! Have you heard of TED-Ed? It’s when people take a 5 minute snippet of a TED-Talk and animate it… so cool!! I went on a hunt for videos that have a food/ag theme and this is what I came up with – for when you just have a couple of minutes of free … Continue reading 5 Ted-Ed Videos You Should Watch
Imagine what I ran into today in a Costa Rican cafeteria… … taking the coconut water craze to the next level! Speaking of the foodieism that is oh-so-perfectly reflected in real-coconut-coconut-water – have you ever wanted to see virtually all big food and ag writers of the USA speak about their passion? Give you reading … Continue reading An Edible Education – Class Is In Session!
