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How do we feed more people? The answer in the 1960s was the so-called “green revolution” – a pretty name for industrial agriculture: more chemical fertilizers and pesticides on certain mono-crops to max out yields. It worked: developing countries went from growing 800 million tonnes to more than 2.2 billion tonnes between 1961 and 2000. It also didn’t [...]  This NYT story may be a quirky diversion about a few people foraging for edible plants in parks…or a harbinger of what could become general as we head into an uncertain food future. It reminds me of the Tragedy of the Commons, the often-quoted essay by Garret Hardin about what happens when some people exploit the [...] Quinoa is not a grain after all, I learned from reading this NY Times piece. It’s a chenopod. Now you know. It’s also delicious, and packed with nutrients. No wonder it’s getting the star treatment from good food fans around the world. Trouble is, folks back home in Bolivia are now finding it too expensive to [...] More voices are making the connection between the failure of the global agribusiness-run food system and global unrest. This is from Al Jazeera English. Remember when CNN rode its live coverage of the U.S. military campaign Desert Storm to become a world leader in journalism? That’s where Al Jazeera English is at right now. If you [...] Urban farmer in Cuba Three years ago it was a puzzle when the food price crisis starved millions. It was a time of record harvests; the world never had so much food. Turns out speculators — the same banks, hedge funds and capitalist investors who brought you to the brink of global financial wipeout — [...] Is it a yard or farm? That’s the question being asked near Nanaimo and throughout British Columbia as a 2.5 acre organic farm has been given 90 days to shut down because…it’s a farm, when it’s supposed a yard. The area is zoned residential. But what do the words “farm” and “yard” really mean as we [...] The VanGoGreen site has posted an author interview with me for the urban agriculture series I did on a Tyee fellowship. Questions are from Robert Oimet, the ace sound/vid man who put together CBC3. Check out the VanGoGreen site here. Even if you aren’t interested in our food future, or are too stretched to get through the [...] |
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Copyright © 2012 David Tracey
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