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Fri May 28, 2010 at 12:39:51 PM PDT
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| In keeping with the food analogy, here's a sampling of the news I've been pushing off the edge of my plate, hoping the dog will eat it and I won't get in trouble :) I've done a remarkably poor job in keeping up with non-Cuba-related news in the past week or so, largely because I've been so involved in catching up on all of the gardening I missed while I was gone as well as cataloging and uploading about 500 pictures and transcribing audio files of everywhere I went into the diaries I've been posting. (Taking notes is sooo 2009!)
But the news keeps happening, even as I keep ignoring it. So here you go.
- Obviously the biggest news these days is the oil spill. Here's the best summary of the spill's impact to global wildlife I've heard so far. It's absolutely tragic, given the number of species that migrate through the Gulf or breed in the Gulf. The only GOOD news I've heard is that Bluefin Tuna have 2 separate breeding populations and only one of them breeds in the Gulf. The other breeds in the Mediterranean.
- Zester Daily has a fantastic piece about the hands that feed us - the more than a million migrant farmworkers that make up a "virtually invisible underclass -- whose days begin in darkness and involve unending hours of stoop labor under the blinding sun for wages that rarely amount to more than $10,000 a year."
- Michele Simon wonders where Big Food will put the 1.5 trillion calories they've pledged to remove from our food by the end of 2015.
- Sojourners: Sustainable ag can feed the world.
- Here's a blog to check out and read regularly: Nourishing the Planet. Right now, they are covering food production and hunger in Africa. This week, blogger Danielle Nierenberg writes from Senegel. Next she's headed to Mali, Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire, Niger, Benin and Togo.
- Are farmers cooling Chicago's summers? Tightly packed rows of corn and soy are turning dry, 90-degree days into muggy, 80-something days that don't cool down at night.
- Here's a great response to conservative politicians bitching about the USDA's Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program:
Bruce Babcock, an economist and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University, said it was "ironic" that Roberts and others objected to the USDA spending $65 million on Know Your Farmer.
Babcock pointed out that commodity producers received $5 billion over the last two years, and the crop insurance industry received $7 billion.
"We should welcome alternative producers if we want to see entrepreneurship grow in rural America," he argued. "How can it hurt? It can only help."
- Pew opposes the Marine Stewardship Council's decision to certify Antarctic krill as sustainable. Pew says "The certification gives the false impression that the entire fishery for Antarctic krill is sustainable when in reality it is not."
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| Jill Richardson :: Sampler Platter |
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