It’s Corny! Potluck dinner and free screening of King Corn

29Nov08

About King Corn: a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives the fast-food nation. Best friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, move to the US heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat and how we farm.

Filed under: Agriculture, Economics, Food Processing, Food Retail, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), GMOs, Society   |  2 Comments
Tags: Agriculture, corn, Food, fructose, genetic engineering, modified, pervasive, sugar, syrup, system

Organic farming ‘could feed Africa’ - Africa, World – The Independent

27Nov08

New evidence suggests that organic practices – derided by some as a Western lifestyle fad – are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa’s small farmers who remain among the poorest people on earth. The head of the UN’s Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report ‘indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed

Filed under: Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Organic Agriculture   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Africa, Agriculture, farming, organic, poverty, productivity, yield

6,000 Pounds of Produce on a Quarter-Acre

18Nov08

Robert McFalls’ new film, HomeGrown is the inspiring story of the Dervaes family – father, son and two daughters – that run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California.

Filed under: Food Security, Urban Agriculture, Vegetables and Fruit   |  1 Comment
Tags: acre, biodiesel, biofuel, cultivation, energy, farming, Food, frontier, grid, local, off, prairie, solar, sub, sufficiency, urban

BLASTED: Study on Organics vs. Conventional

09Nov08

A previous study on the health benefits between organic and your usual supermarket produce may have got it all wrong! They found no different – the problem was that they did the test on soil that was previously organically managed which would have made both conventional or organic crops about the same!

Filed under: Environment, Organic Agriculture, research, Science, Soil   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Agriculture, comparison, conventional, design, Food, industrial, method, methodology, organic, production, research

Genetic Engineering in Your Food – Things You Need to Know

06Nov08

What in the world are we eating? As we shop the grocery store aisles or peruse the menu at a restaurant, we are becoming more and more aware that we really don’t always know what we’re eating. A big unknown is whether or not our food has been genetically engineered. Over and over again, polls show that consumers would dearly love to have genetically engineered food labelled, but governments have backed away from mandating labels. So what’s a consumer to do?

Filed under: Ethics, Food Sovereignty, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), GMOs, Policy and Law, Science, Society   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Agriculture, cultivation, deception, dna, farmer, farming, Food, gene, genetic engineering, gmo, label, lmo, monsanto, regulation, seed, transparency

Tell USDA: No GE Papaya!

01Nov08

Tell USDA: No GE Papaya! October 31, 2008 Dear Blog Reader & Concerned Citizen (yes, that’s YOU!), Tell USDA: No GE Papaya! The US Department of Agriculture is considering a petition to allow genetically engineered papaya trees to be commercially grown and sold in Florida. This would be the first time this genetically engineered crop [...]

Filed under: Food Security, Food Sovereignty, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), GMOs   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: action, engineer, GE, genetic, living, modified, organisms, papaya, petition, regulation, United States, US, USDA