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Food and Agriculture

The New Mexico Mom Growing Political Power From A Community Garden

March 11, 2025 Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Resilience. , , ,
Alamogordo is a working-class town. Because of its proximity to three military bases, lots of veterans live here. Like many places in New Mexico, housing costs have skyrocketed and rent is taking up a bigger portion of locals’ paychecks, making family’s food purchases—and particularly the quality of food—dwindle. As a result, 16.5% of Otero County’s population is food insecure, higher than both the state and national averages. In the county, 19% of residents live below the poverty line, including 28% of those under age 18 and 13% of those 65 or older. Food is often the first thing a family skimps on when facing tough budgets; you can’t pay half the light bill, but you can cut back on groceries.

Indigenous Food Reciprocity As A Model For Mutual Aid

March 10, 2025 Kate Nelson, Civil Eats. , , ,
In the Arctic and Far North, where a successful hunt can mean the difference between feeding the village or scrounging to make ends meet, one might assume a scarcity mindset would take hold. Instead, reciprocity prevails. Examples of this sharing-focused approach abound. A recent documentary, One With the Whale, follows the hunting practices of an island community in the Bering Sea. In one scene, after a long period without finding game, a hunting crew harpoons a seal, which will allow them to feed some of the community. “It’s always a blessing to receive any animal that you catch,” Siberian Yupik hunter Daniel Apassingok tells the filmmakers. “As small as the game is, the game is dispersed with four or five other boats."

Reviving Native Food Sovereignty

March 1, 2025 Dahr Jamail, Resilience. , , ,
The Tongass is one of the most ecologically important places on Earth, and plays a critical role in the climate crisis by sequestering one billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The towering old growth forests of the Tongass store the carbon equivalent of six million cars a year, while producing a quarter of all the salmon in the Pacific Northwest. This intact and abundant rainforest are the homelands of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian Peoples, who care for, steward, and honor the lands and waters that sustain all Southeast Alaskans. Communities in this region practice a way-of-life that is rapidly disappearing across the globe.

Trump Provides An Opportunity To Change The Way We Look At Food

February 23, 2025 Lois Ross, Rabble. , , , , ,
As the political and economic instability created by the goings-on south of the border continue, it is time for all of us to recall how we arrived at this juncture. It is also time to acknowledge that, despite common belief, there has never really been “free” trade with the United States, but rather only a series of measures that have encouraged the unhealthy integration of the Canadian economy into that of our southern neighbours and the ensuing enrichment and concentration of wealth in the hands of transnational corporate giants. Throughout these so-called free trade agreements (FTA, FTAA, NAFTA, CUSMA) the US has often filed unfair trade practice complaints that have led to international trade dispute panels.

Should Cities Open Their Own Grocery Stores?

January 12, 2025 Jule Pattison-Gordon, Governing. , , ,
By now, most people are familiar with the concept of food deserts — areas where residents lack ready access to fresh foods. Should local governments step in to operate grocery stores in neighborhoods that don’t have them? Aside from ideological questions over whether governments should get involved with operating retail establishments, there are a number of practical hurdles that are difficult to overcome. Zohran Mamdani, a member of the state Assembly who is running for mayor of New York, calls for a network of city-owned grocery stores.

Small Farming, Urbanisation And Climate Migration

December 2, 2024 Jake Smaje, Resilience.org. , , , ,
Bangladesh is a small country that sits within the Northeast of South Asia with India wrapped around it, and Myanmar to the South. Despite its small size and relatively recent independence, Bangladesh plays an oversized role in the way poverty, development, climate change and urbanisation are imagined globally. Often in discussions of climate change the conversation turns to Bangladesh as a country imagined to be sinking, throwing out waves of climate migrants across the world. For many reasons this vision is wrong. I don’t have space to go into this in depth here  (see further references below). Instead, I want to tell a different but connected story about Bangladesh, urbanisation and the environment.

The Missing Link In Europe’s Sustainable Food Future

November 25, 2024 Anna Scavuzzo and David Dessers, Resilience.org. , , ,
As we face increasingly urgent global challenges, including climate change, urbanisation and growing inequality, Europe must transform its food systems to ensure resilience, sustainability and inclusivity. The Strategic Dialogue for Agriculture, convened by President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was designed to depolarise the contentious debates surrounding food and agriculture. It brought together a wide range of stakeholders who unanimously adopted a comprehensive set of recommendations for the future of Europe’s food systems.

The World Bank Must Stop Ploughing Funds Into Factory Farming

November 15, 2024 Alessandro Ramazzotti, DeSmog. , , , ,
Animal agriculture is one of the leading drivers of the climate crisis. According to a recent World Bank report, food and agriculture generate almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, of which meat and dairy account for nearly 60 percent. Separate analysis shows that cattle ranching accounts for around 70 percent of the current deforestation of the Amazon. Recognising the significant problems that animal-based foods are causing, the World Bank’s cafeteria stopped serving meat earlier this year.

Raising Chickens, Ducks, And Bees Allowed In Detroit

November 13, 2024 Steve Neavling, Detroit Metro Times. , , , ,
Detroiters will soon be able to keep chickens, ducks, and honeybees in their backyards under a new ordinance passed by the Detroit City Council on Tuesday. The council voted 5-3 in favor of the measure, which goes into effect in January 2025, marking a shift in urban agriculture regulations and allowing residents to raise certain animals for fresh food production, including eggs and honey, within city limits. Advocates see the new ordinance as a way to combat food insecurity and improve access to healthy, local food. Urban agriculture can also raise property values and encourage homeownership in surrounding areas, they say.

The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying The World

November 4, 2024 Helena Norberg-Hodge, Counter Punch. , , ,
We can thank small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers, and food and farming activists for advancing ecologically sound food production methods. Agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, and other methods can address many of the global food system’s worst impacts, including biodiversity loss, energy depletion, toxic pollution, food insecurity, and massive carbon emissions. These inspiring testaments to human ingenuity and goodwill have two things in common: They involve smaller-scale farms adapted to local conditions and depend more on human attention and care than energy and technology.

Mapped: How Big Industries Hope To Sway The UN Biodiversity Talks

October 30, 2024 Hazel Healy and Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. , , , , , , , , , , ,
Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

BRICS Grain Exchange Would Depoliticize Global Cereal Market

October 27, 2024 Sputnik, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
Russia proposed creating a BRICS grain exchange that would serve as a new trading platform for the world’s largest producers and consumers of food grains. The measure could help depoliticize global markets and eliminate intermediaries in the form of Western exchanges, according to experts consulted by Sputnik. The dominance of the United States in the world economy did not start with the dollar. After the Second World War, the US became the leading supplier of wheat and corn. As a result, the entire modern infrastructure of the global grain market has been shaped by Washington. Thus, the benchmarks are made by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and the US dollar is primarily used as the settlement currency.

Big Ag Uses ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ To Mask Business-As-Usual

October 23, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. , , ,
During September’s Climate Week in New York City, the world’s major food companies lined up to share their pro-nature credentials, claiming that they are embracing “regenerative agriculture” practices that will reduce their massive carbon footprint. However, a new report finds that multinational food and ag companies – such as Cargill, Bayer and Unilever – which are using the term, have barely changed how they do business. A total of 30 major agriculture companies were analysed in the report, which was released in September by the New Climate Institute. It found that while around 80 percent of the firms were heavily referencing the phrase “regenerative agriculture” in their climate and sustainability strategies, only a third had targets, and many lacked specifics on how plans would be implemented, or applied them to just small subsets of their total operations.

Chickpeas Could Become A Major Drought-Resistant Protein Source

October 19, 2024 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. , , ,
A new study is highlighting chickpeas as a source protein for a potentially drought-stricken future brought on by climate change. The research, led by molecular biologist Wolfram Weckwerth from the University of Vienna, explored the benefits of 36 different chickpea genotypes as climate change impacts continue to threaten food security around the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, only around nine plant species make up 66% of total crop production. However, there are more than 6,000 edible plant species.

Richmond’s Black Leaders Dreamed Of Creating An Agrihood

October 6, 2024 Barry Greene, Jr, Next City. , , , , ,
When Richmond, Virginia-based nonprofit Girls for a Change was offered a eight-acre parcel of land from a local benefactor, CEO Angela Patton knew the Black youth development organization could do something special for the neighborhood. “We were sitting on this property for a while trying to just figure out what would it be,” says Patton, who has lived in Richmond’s Bensley suburb for nearly two decades. “Would it be a summer camp for girls? Would it be a community center for the community? Would it be a women’s wellness center?” In 2021, Patton announced their plan to turn the vacant land into the Bensley Agrihood, a permanently affordable housing development featuring 10 affordable homes, four tiny homes, a wellness center and a 1.5-acre working community farm that would serve as an amenity for the neighborhood.
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