Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
It’s no secret that Wendell Berry is another one of my inspirations when thinking about sustainable food systems – my post about his work “The Pleasures of Eating” has been one of the most-viewed posts on this blog, and his name repeatedly comes up in things I read and am influenced by. A friend of … Continue reading "Land That Is In Human Use Requires Human Care" – An Interview with Wendell Berry
Happy Tuesday! If anybody else need help to start their day (my pot of coffee is already brewing), here are some interesting and entertaining little videos to get your brain juices flowing: This is a satirical take on the meaning of the “all-natural” label you can find on so many products and whose lack of … Continue reading Let's Watch Some TV – Just the Good Kind Though 😉
How are your holidays going, everybody? I hope you spent a wonderful Christmas season and are still in the delicious between-Christmas-and-New-Year limbo that doesn’t require you to do anything whatsoever but read and sip eggnog and mulled wine and relax. Have you started thinking about your New Year’s resolutions? I often think that resolutions are … Continue reading For A (Climate-) Healthy 2014
Well, the Warsaw summit on climate change has turned out to be a major disappointment, with many prominent NGOs walking out prematurely to signal their protest at governmental inaction and last-ditch agreements remaining vague and postponing real commitments to future meetings. Commentators especially deplored the lack of urgency that seemed to reign among the negotiators, … Continue reading What Does Warsaw Mean for Agriculture?
(click through for a larger pdf version) The FAO has just released a new infographic showcasing some of the facts and numbers its statistics unit, FAOSTAT, regularly collects. Some of the numbers that stand out to me: More than 840 million people worldwide are undernourished. Compare that with the fact that the average annual food … Continue reading The Current State of Agriculture (According to the FAO)
You guys. This is one of these speeches where I just want to yell “hear, hear!” after every single sentence – and it is all the more remarkable where Dr. M Jahi Chappell, the director of agroecology and agricultural policy for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, made this speech: at the World Food … Continue reading "Science ≠ Production, and Production ≠ Food Security" – A Message to the World Food Prize
What does a day in your life look like? Getting up, brushing your teeth, breakfast, off to work, maybe go to the gym on your way home to justify the indulgences at the dinner party this weekend? What do you worry about? I’m sure about important things, but let me hazard a guess that it … Continue reading A Life In the Day of a Ugandan Woman Farmer
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
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?