You gonna eat that? New research says genetically modified crops planted in the wild can change native neighbors’ DNA. So in the future, food activists worry, you might not have a dietary choice. Join the GMO debate.
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FarmVille is the green place to be for city folk reaping the rewards of rural relationships and cooperation through good, clean social gaming.
The hugely popular farming sim has my friends and family bragging on Facebook about a season of planting cash crops, helping neighbors grow lettuce instead of lawns and finding new homes for lost little duckies. It quacks me up!
The strategy of the Zynga grainchild: The user is given the chance to start their own farm, build it …
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At last, an endangered species that deserves to be – the battery hen.
Free range eggs may be significantly more expensive, but that’s not stopping shoppers plucking them from the shelves while turning their noses up at caged hen eggs.
This is yet another example of how ethical consumerism rules the roost in today’s marketplace (okay, enough with the chicken puns). Thanks to the hard work of people like British TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the patrons of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust, the appalling living …
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When farmers in Mato Grosso, the top soy-producing state in Brazil, were introduced to GMO soy varieties, they jumped at the chance to plant them, even though the country’s government hadn’t yet approved their use. It was a foolish risk to take; the GM soy these farmers planted has consistently provided lower yields than conventional soy varieties.
About half of the soy grown in Mato Grosso is genetically modified, but because of the lower yields – and the fact that many distributors are shunning GMO – quite a …
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Destruction in the Amazon. Clear-cutting of virgin forests. These are sad, infuriating events, but they can also seem distant – even abstract. How about the wanton destruction of a thriving Los Angeles community garden? Now that brought me to tears.
Who owns the land?
In 1992, after the Los Angeles riots, a 14-acre community garden was formed in an industrial section of South Central LA. Over 350 families banded together to create an urban paradise and grow their own food in the middle of a largely forgotten and blighted concrete jungle.
There was …
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If there’s one way to sum up the English, it’s in our approach to community gardening.
Across the Atlantic, gardeners club together and collectively transform large swathes of common land into something beautiful and useful. Agrarian democracy, you might say. Here, it’s feudalism – with the land carved into allotments and parceled out to individuals, for individuals. For a nominal fee to the local town council, an allotment is an Englishman/-woman’s private kingdom to tend and make productive. It’s an opportunity for good, satisfying hard work, a sense of community …
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Princess Isabella of Spain outlawed slavery in Brazil on May 13, 1888. And that would seem to be that. But it’s not. Raj Patel, in his book Stuffed and Starved, writes that there are somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 people enslaved in Brazil.
Though sugarcane and cattle ranches are known culprits, slavery happens on soy plantations, too. In 2003, the last year for which figures are cited, 4,932 slaves were freed from farms in Brazil – and that’s just the farms that were inspected.
As we saw …
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In her classic book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, novelist Barbara Kingsolver leaves off novel writing to document a year of her family’s adventure in eating locally.
For one year, the family grows, raises, and preserves as much food as possible, relying on local farmers for the rest of their needs (other than very few exceptions, such as coffee and spices). The fact that Kingsolver and family had to first move from their longtime adopted home of Tucson, Arizona to their ancestral home in the hills of southern Appalachia to accomplish …
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Show of hands: how many of you dream about moving to the country, growing your own food and living off the grid? It may not be for you, but my husband and I talk about this all the time. Our biggest obstacle? Affording the land and infrastructure and then making enough money to get by until we become self-sufficient. The people who have done it are inspiring.
Take the story of Mr. and Mrs. Phillipe-Johnson, who gave up steady employment, moved to the country, assumed a lifestyle …
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