CALIFORNIA, Md. - Approaching Evergreen Elementary, it's clear right away that there's something different about this new school. A pair of silo-like structures squats in front of the two-story brick building - cisterns storing rainwater for flushing the toilets. Then there are the cactuses and other plants growing atop the entrance canopy - put there to soak up more rain.
Everyone needs something to believe in, and for many Latin American progressives, that something for years has been Costa Rica. The country has long been cited as a beacon of progressive tranquility in a region better known for violence, inequality and poverty. Following an uprising in 1948 led by Jose Figueres Ferrer, the country embarked on its own unique path of social democracy, involving extensive progressive taxation, universal health and education availability, and no armed forces.
Without water, nothing can live. And in the Western United States,
there isn't much of it because the region is a desert.
"Everything yearns to be alive in the desert," says Riley Mitchell, a
park ranger at Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah.
Okay, only fair to warn you. I do not answer the question here. Second, the subject is not really one for a blog, more for a book. But it's important to say short things as well as long. Third, I have a bias. We all do. In this case, it matters that I like Michael Pollan's writing and that I believe there is much wrong with conventional agriculture as practiced in the United States. You will see why that is relevant in just a moment. Now back to the question.
This one really matters.
Most of us would agree that there is a serious problem vis-a-vis access to food in the developing world. According to the UN food agency, there are now more than one billion undernourished people worldwide. The need to do something about the broken food system is especially apparent in Haiti, where I have been on a working assignment with Grassroots International for the past few weeks.
Yesterday Secretary Clinton was in Kenya with a delegation that included Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, as well as Representatives Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) and Nita M. Lowey (D-NY). While the group was there on a broad platform to discuss economic development in Africa, including food security issues, the delegation took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to visit the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) lab, which is best known for unsuccessfully trying to produce a genetically modified, virus-resistant sweet potato under a US-led program.
From the Victory gardens of the last century's two world wars to the community-garden movement started in the 1970s, urban agriculture has played an important role in the security of the food supply.
Metro Vancouver is no stranger to the urban harvest. According to City Farmer, 44 per cent of Vancouver's population is involved in some form of urban agriculture.
When Vancouver city council passed a motion in 2006 to encourage the creation of 2,010 new garden plots by Jan. 1, 2010, a legacy for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, there were 950 plots in 18 gardens.
I have a difficult time accepting genetically modified (GM) foods at
face value. My primary concerns have to do with what we know, and, more
importantly don’t know about how this “promising” technology may or may
not be impacting human health and our environment.
Inside hulking white tanks near the Oakland foot of the Bay Bridge, some of your pizza crusts, kung pao chicken and orange peels are cleaning the wastewater from 650,000 households in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
Sort of.
