NewsRack: flenvcenter/Food_Independent/Food-Distribution/Cooperatives

Tezozomoc: Renewing Our Community's Agricultural Life From Loss in South Central Los Angeles - Green on HuffingtonPost.com

Tezozomoc — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Too often, the same people who work our fields during the day, planting and harvesting fresh produce, spend their evenings in line at the local food bank.

SciAm op-ed: Kill biofuels to solve the food crisis - Grist Magazine

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:30:00 GMT

by Tom Laskawy. With the Senate, on a second attempt, successfully passing an amendment to end the 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol subsidy for American refiners and the 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol, I thought I’d point to this terrific op-ed in Scientific American on how to solve the food crisis. According to author Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, it’s the biofuels, stupid. The crisis certainly isn’t due to a lack of agricultural productivity, no matter what agribusiness and the USDA say. Searchinger claims: [T]otal world grain production last year was the third highest in history. Indeed, it has grown since 2004 at rates that, on average, exceed the long-term trend since 1980 and roughly match the trends of the past decade. Even with bad weather in Russia and northern Australia last year, global average crop yields were only 1 percent below what the trends would lead us to expect, a modest gap. It’s also not caused by demand from China. Searchinger ...

Venezuela’s battle for food sovereignty - Green Left Weekly issue #780

jay_f — Sun, 22 May 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Sun, 22/05/2011 By Federico Fuentes , Caracas When I asked Alfredo, a dairy farmer and president of the Prolesa milk processing co-operative in Tachira state, what food sovereignty meant to him, he said: “Food sovereignty is not only about being able to produce enough food to feed ourselves, it also means getting to a point where we can export food to other countries. “There’s a global food crisis, and each day more and more people are going hungry. As Venezuelan campesinos [peasants] we need to realise that we have an obligation to the people of the world.” See also: read ...

Ronnie Cummins: What's Wrong With Local Food? Local and Organic Food and Farming: The Gold Standard - Green on HuffingtonPost.com

Ronnie Cummins — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Beyond the greenwashing and co-opting of the term, what does "local" food and farming really mean? What is the impact of non-organic local food and farming on public health, nutrition, biodiversity, and climate?

Local and Organic Food and Farming: The Gold Standard - Commondreams.org Views

andrea — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Will Allen Ronnie Cummins Kate Desterberg More and more consumers and corporations are touting the benefits of "local" foods, often described as "sustainable," "healthy," or "natural." According to the trade publication, Sustainable Food News, local as a marketing claim has grown by 15 percent from 2009 to 2010, and it"s likely that number will increase in the coming year. 1 Even supermarket giant and junk food purveyor Wal-Mart, with total sales in 2009 of $405 billion, has jumped on the bandwagon. read ...

Shoulders to the Wheel: Laying the Foundations for Sustainable Local Food Systems - Truthout - All Articles

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT

How do you create a locally harvested food system for a city of 100,000? This question is being asked presently in a seminar, in Duluth, Minnesota and the broader western Lake Superior region, as well as in many other cities across the United States. It was also an urgent local question a century ago.

Everything Will Be Different Tomorrow - Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:30:00 GMT

Environmental entrepreneur Ayr Muir '00, SM '01, sees a fast-food answer to global warming. Ayr Muir '00, SM '01, spent his student days at MIT experimenting with alloys and polymers, thin films and crystals. Today, he's set up a different kind of lab: one where the raw materials are organic chickpeas and free-range eggs, Prince Edward Island potatoes and Rhode Island rhubarb. He'll experiment with just about any food that's fresh and local--any food, that is, except ...

The Vegetable Express: A Way to Sell Produce to Those in Need - AlterNet

Barry Estabrook, The Atlantic — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 18:30:00 GMT

One Vermont farm has found a creative way to get healthy food to underserved communities.