Food

U.S. Wastes More Food Energy than Gained from Gulf Oil & Gas

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Wasted food energy in the U.S. totals some 2150 trillion kilojoules per year–more than the U.S. could produce in ethanol (grain) biofuels. Further, an article in the New Scientist asserts that this amount is greater than the energy produced annually from all the oil and gas extracted from the Gulf of Mexico.

Costco Adopts Sustainable Seafood Policy (correction)

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Costco has responded positively to its shareholders’ suggestions in a letter posted on its website last month. Costco has, as of 2009, voluntarily disclosed more information about its seafood suppliers.
Additionally, Costco has begun working with suppliers of farmed salmon to insure compliance with the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue and will partner with the World Wildlife Fund to monitor Thailand’s compliance with the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue.

Greenpeace Activists Quarantine Illegal GE Crops

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Greenpeace recently found genetically engineered maize from Monsanto, MON810, illegally growing in Italy. Now, activists from Italy, Austria, Germany and Hungary are quarantining this GE maize. “Greenpeace has taken action today to prevent any further contamination from these hazardous and illegal GE crops,” said Federica Ferrario, Greenpeace Italy Agriculture campaigner. “For days these crops will

The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity

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Lester R. Brown A dangerous geopolitics of food scarcity is emerging in which individual countries, acting in their narrowly defined self-interest, reinforce the trends causing global food security to deteriorate. This began in late 2007 when wheat-exporting countries, like Russia and Argentina, attempted to counter domestic food price rises by limiting or banning exports. Viet

Raising Water Productivity to Increase Food Security

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In this Earth Policy Institute post, Lester R. Brown discusses the problem of water shortages across the world and potential solutions to this problem. Lester R. Brown With water shortages constraining food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity over the last

Question: How to Curb CO2 Emissions and Feed the World?

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In a recent paper published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences website (Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification, by Jennifer A. Burney, Steven J. Davis, and
David B. Lobell), the authors estimated the GHG emissions from U.S. agriculture for the period from 1961 through 2005–a period of great agricultural intensification–and show a massive decrease in GHG emissions as a result of this intensification.

1st Restaurant Menu to Show Carbon Footprints

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The first restaurant chain to show carbon footprints of its menu items, Otarian, just opened its first store in New York. [social_buttons] The first restaurant chain in the world to show the carbon footprint of its menu items, believe it or not, is not McDonald’s. It is vegetarian restaurant chain Otarian. Otarian debuted this innovative

Millions of Endangered Sea Turtles Killed by Fisheries

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Sea turtles are getting killed in the millions from large-scale fisheries. See how this happens, potential solutions to the problem, and what you can do below. [social_buttons] A new report published in the journal Conservation Letters shows the results of the first global assessment of turtle “bycatch” by longline, gillnet and trawl fisheries. Basically, bycatch

Trader Joe's Offers Sustainable Seafood Thanks to Greenpeace

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Greenpeace successfully targets Trader Joe’s and convinces the supermarket chain to adopt sustainable seafood practices by the end of 2012. [social_buttons] I have to admit the folks at Greenpeace are quite effective, resourceful, and clever. Most recently, the NGO challenged a popular supermarket chain known for its organic, healthy food offerings. Trader Joe’s has positioned

Caveman Thanksgiving: Prehistoric Man Roasted Birds Too

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[social_buttons] New findings, published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, indicate early Europeans enjoyed a much broader diet than first suspected. We have known for a long while that early man hunted big game such as mastodons, now prehistoric bone findings show that early man also hunted and cooked game fowl. The

Why Going Vegetarian For One Day Will Help Stop Global Warming

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Americans eat lots of meat. So much so that livestock is now one of the leading contributors to global warming, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions as measured in a carbon dioxide equivalent. A recent United Nations report concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the

80% of Amazon Deforestation Stems from Cattle Ranching

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Greenpeace Brazil has released a report at the World Social Forum in Belém showing that up to 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is due to an increase in raising cattle for human consumption.   Brazil has quickly become the largest exporter of beef in the world, but they are not satisfied with

Urban Farmer Wins MacArthur Genius Grant

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Will Allen, former pro basketball player, founded Growing Power to help low-income people in Milwaukee  and Chicago grow their own food locally. He will now have an extra $500,000 to help his efforts.   The MacArthur Foundation announced yesterday that they will honor his work with one of their  25 annual ‘genius’ grants–a five-year grant

You Are Eating GMOs, Should You Care?

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Any time you eat non-organic food, there is a 70 percent chance you are ingesting genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Modern genetic modification is different from historical alterations–such as plant breeding–because today, genes are transferred from one species to another. For instance, when you eat GM food, there is a good chance it has been injected with genes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)—hence Bt Corn.

Are these GM foods a path to end world hunger and ensure a robust harvest in the face of possible harsh future climates? Or, is it a way for corporations to gain global control over agriculture for profit, releasing organisms that have unknown effects on the environment and human health?

According to the USDA, in 1996, less than 5 percent of soy products were genetically modified. Within 12 years, that amount increased to 90 percent. These have been in our foods for over a decade and as far as we can tell, nothing has really gone wrong. Is that why most Americans are not hearing about GMOs?

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