Madison residents love their farmers' markets, windmills, rural
health cooperatives, credit unions and hundreds of other green
businesses, appreciating how they simultaneously benefit the local
economy, environment and civic life. Less appreciated, however, is
the essential role localization plays in promoting global
prosperity, sustainability and peace - the central theme of this
weekend's Future Cities 2009 conference taking place in
Madison.
Autumn has arrived in the Northeast. The leaves are turning colors, the days are getting shorter, and the weather has a hint of the chill to come. It's a time of change in many ways. Our nation is grappling with the daunting challenges of health care and global warming. Another change is coming as well. It's called the good food revolution. By bringing locally grown, organic, nutritiously rich food to a table near you, the good food revolution can help us tackle these larger societal issues, and benefit us all.
When The Chronicle entered the lower level meeting room of the
downtown Ann Arbor library, the first things we noticed were three
large trays of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut into bite-sized
wedges. As public forums go, this was an offbeat gnoshing choice.
Journalism is breaking my heart. Or should I say, “journalism.”
Hate-mongering media extremists have captured our news networks and are using the public’s platform – our airwaves – to pick off progressive leaders like Van Jones and misinform the American people.
Nothing new there, of course. But it’s especially outrageous that the same networks that didn’t challenge the rush to war with Iraq and Afghanistan now host right-wing talking heads suspicious of healthcare reform who help spread absurd lies about “death panels.”
GENEVA - A group of 125 non-governmental organisations from 50 countries is calling on the governments participating in the mini-ministerial trade talks in India over the next two days to reject the further liberalisation of food and rather promote policies that will achieve food security and rural development and safeguard farmers' livelihoods.
Burlington - It's
all about the benjamins. But for the past 18 months or so, consumers
have been less willing to part with their hard-earned cash, whether
that greenback has a picture of George Washington or Ben Franklin.
As national economies have stalled, so has the global
economy. Americans have seen the housing markets slump, car
manufacturers crash, and banks begging for bailouts.
But some forward thinking people in Berkshire County
prepared for this several years ago, resulting in a local currency that
has been purchased more than two million times.
Close to a billion people in the world are hungry, and there is growing poverty, unemployment, and displacement in the rural sector. The world community is in widespread agreement about the urgency of more investment in agriculture. The food crisis, partly characterized by unstable markets and low reserves, has led governments to seek measures to meet their food security needs more directly than through global trade. Even though this year's harvest was good and there was some replenishment of global stocks, there's no certainty of what markets will look like next year.
DETROIT — “I want to be an urban farmer,” said Tom Howe, 19, a freshman
at Wayne State University. “I want to start a community garden in some
kind of ecovillage with farmers and chefs.”
This may seem an unusual career goal for a young man of the
twenty-first century, let alone one from Birmingham, an upscale middle
class suburb of Detroit. It’s also counter-intuitive that a major
university located in the middle of the cultural center could offer
Howe a means to his aspirations.
WASHINGTON - The government's food aid programs are spending more and delivering less to hungry people than they could, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.
The reason: U.S. agencies buy commodities here and ship them on high-cost U.S.-registered ships. Countries that buy food aid locally in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the GAO found, deliver it for about a third less.
In addition, U.S. aid shipments reached their destinations in an average of 147 days, compared with 31 to 41 days for food bought locally.
I'm increasingly convinced
that the reason why human equality, human dignity, and social pluralism
are illusive in American society is that we do not have what Miguel
de Unamuno called "el público" and Alexis de Tocqueville called
"the public spirit." Instead, American communities, towns and cities
are segregated by race, class, and citizenship status, with withered
downtowns, and with no spaces for people to discuss, argue, and talk
across those divides of race, class and citizenship.
