This year Georgia (US state) passed an Arizona-style law to make life and employment harder on its undocumented immigrants, including about 425,000 agricultural workers. In the spring,
farmers argued that they would be unable to recruit new workers on time for the summer harvest with a sudden change in policy. Surprisingly, the Obama administration
did not step in to block the law taking effect.
The result is an estimated 46% of farms without enough workers and $300M of crops rotting in the fields. Georgia's govenor is
shocked.
posted by a robot made out of meat
on Jun 23, 2011 -
215 comments
Yale's 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across ten policy categories covering both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.
posted by wilful
on Apr 22, 2011 -
8 comments
Land Girls and Lumber Jills is an exhibit at Scotland's
National War Museum. It explores the history of the
Women's Land Army and the
Women's Timber Corps. These two organizations were formed during the First World War to compensate for shortages in male laborers in agriculture and forestry, respectively. The museum's exhibition ties in a
collection on flickr,
interviews and a
book available for order online. Other sources online will allow one to hear
audio samples of the Land Girls' stories, read
Land Girls' and
Lumber Jills' memoirs and watch
old propaganda clips about them or more recent
documentary videos (
more on YT).
Officially commemorated in 2008, these civilian service organizations have also been the subject of a film,
"The Land Girls" (
trailer), an
ITV sitcom, and a
BBC series (Episode
1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
The British Women's Land Army model was successfully replicated in the U.S. with the
Woman's Land Army of America (whose members were known as
"farmerettes") and in Australia with the
Australian Women's Land Army.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal
on Dec 16, 2010 -
8 comments
Urban gardening and agriculture are becoming increasingly important as our world becomes more urbanized.
Urban Gardening Help is for those environmentally conscious urban dwellers who want to use
hydroponics and other tools to create a green corner devoted to nature in their own home.
Urban Gardens looks for innovative and eco-friendly designs, trends, and ideas for the stylish urban home. See, for example,
tiny herb gardens, where succulent cuttings come in small packages.
Urban Garden Casual works with the constraints of limited-space, light, and micro-climates created from the shadows of neighboring buildings by using unconventional ideas like the
garden pouch.
posted by netbros
on Jul 10, 2010 -
9 comments
"
Indeed, 90 percent of the world’s wheat has little or no protection against the Ug99 race of P. graminis. If nothing is done to slow the pathogen, famines could soon become the norm — from the Red Sea to the Mongolian steppe — as Ug99 annihilates a crop that provides a third of our calories."
[more inside]
posted by SpringAquifer
on Mar 1, 2010 -
36 comments
Yummy avocados. So delicious...so contentious...and at times...so expensive. Why have prices in the U.S., particularly California, been so high? And why have they dropped? Weather and a bad crop? Or are the causes often more insidious? A
one act play sums up one perspective on the situation.
[more inside]
posted by thisperon
on Feb 23, 2010 -
70 comments
How green was my valley: California's economic meltdown The fields of wheat, cotton and cantaloupe that sustained his family for three generations are gone. The land is a mess of fallow fields, cracked earth and swirling dust. (PDF - By some estimates, 12.8% of the United States' agricultural production (as measured by dollar value) comes from California, and the majority of that is in the Central Valley).
However, his particular scene of devastation, Mr. Allen argues, has nothing to do with the credit crisis, the housing crash or the downturn that has California in a vice grip.
It has to do with a seven-centimetre-long, semi-translucent, steel blue fish known as the Delta smelt. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Jul 24, 2009 -
76 comments
The globe’s networked ecologies of food, water, energy, and waste have established new infrastructures and forms of urbanism. While these ecologies exist at the service of our contemporary lifestyles, they have typically remained hidden from view and from the public conscience.
Infranet Lab is studying the shifting / changing conditions.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 20, 2009 -
2 comments
Produced and recorded in the studios of Kootenay Co-op Radio in Nelson, British Columbia,
Deconstructing Dinner has been designed to dispense and discuss current food issues.
This weekly radio show hosted by Jon Steinman features a wide range of topics revolving around
food security.
[more inside]
posted by utsutsu
on Nov 27, 2008 -
4 comments
Pollan for Agriculture Secretary? It has been suggested (and
previously) that Michael Pollan, author of
Second Nature,
The Omnivore's Dilemma, might make a good Secretary of Agriculture. This would be a dramatic departure for an office that has a decades-long history of steering US agriculture policy to the advantage of the largest agribusiness corporations.
Especially given Obama's
potential connections to
Big Corn, how silly would we be to anticipate real change in US ag policy, relevant as it may be to the economic, energy, climate, and national security issues he campaigned on?
Via the
Brian Lehrer Show.
posted by maniabug
on Nov 17, 2008 -
66 comments
"Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food." Michael Pollan advises the next president on what he can and should do to remake the way we grow and eat our food.
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Oct 10, 2008 -
30 comments
I first encountered the concept of
forest gardening in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
Herland (1915)
[relevant part pages 79-80]; the fictional race of women in her book have completely remade the forests to contain only beneficial and food-bearing plants, which live harmoniously together and replenish the soil naturally. This is
actually being done, less than a hundred years later.
More;
similar,
similar.
posted by fiercecupcake
on Jul 7, 2008 -
25 comments
Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear. "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination."
posted by homunculus
on Apr 3, 2008 -
77 comments
