farming

Can Urban Gardening Make Us Whole?

An in-depth look at how urban gardening is hoping to heal divisions that have plagued Milwaukee—and our nation as a whole

I'm Giving a Book Talk at Politics & Prose Bookstore on October 8

I am thrilled—thrilled!—to reveal that I'll be giving a book talk on Saturday, October 8 at Politics & Prose, Washington, DC's venerated bookseller. I'll be speaking about my book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, at the bookstore starting at 1 p.m. I'll also be signing copies of the book, which goes on sale on September 15, after my talk.

Size Does Matter: The Ecology of Organic Food

The push for organic food to supplant conventionally produced food (i.e., produced with pesticides, supplements and artificial fertilizers) has always been hampered by the claim that the organic production style couldn’t provide the volume of food needed to supply the US population. That claim was not really based in reality so much as a number of predictions about production costs, food costs, and backlash from invested corporations. With 100 million acres of prime US farmland being used to produce field corn, a crop that is diverted almost entirely to animal feed and ethanol pro

Saved by Soils?

This post originally appeared at Emily Monosson's blog: Evolution in a Toxic World We live in an age of pesticide and antibiotic overuse. One outcome is resistance, increasing pesticide use and contamination and fears that we are entering the “post-antibiotic era”. We are addicted to all sorts of commercial chemicals.
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Ranching and the Categorical Imperative

When I was in grade school, my mother was a graduate student in philosophy, and I learned from her about the categorical imperative. What I grasped at that impressionable age was that if you are thinking about doing something, you should imagine that everyone around you, even everyone on earth, will do the same thing. Because if you have the right to do it, then, of course, so does everyone else. I immediately saw that I should not throw my gum wrapper out the car window. If everyone did that the air would be thick, the ground covered, with foil and paper.
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The Rush for Blue Gold Peaks

Lester Brown of The Observer and Preside of the Earth Policy Institute explores the future of agriculture as our dependence on water hits its peak.  Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water.

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