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| Headline |
Author |
Published |
Section |
In Other Words ...
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Donella H. Meadows |
20 Dec 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| A while ago I wrote a column full of solemn statements from august scientists and other wise persons, warning that we are trashing our planet at a sickening pace. The august persons didn't say "trashing" or "sickening." They spoke of "adverse consequences" and "significant geopolitical risk." An Alert Reader (to steal a phrase from Dave Barry), a retired professor of French named Chuck Ferguson, who s ... |
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| Topics: climate, energy, food and agriculture, pollution and waste, water bodies and marine life, wilderness, wildlife (all these topics) |
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Don't Smell the Flowers
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Donella H. Meadows |
15 Nov 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| The more the agribusiness folks mess about with transplanted genes and toxic chemicals and irradiation, the better the market for local, fresh, organic, un-messed-about-with foods. When it comes to things we're going to put into our mouths, things that are literally going to become us, we consumers are cautious, and rightly so. But what about crops we don't eat? What, for example, about flowers? Whether we grow our own or buy them in a ... |
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| Topics: food and agriculture (all these topics) |
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Ag-gravation
An Iowan causes growing pains for agro-industry |
Lisa Jones |
03 Nov 1999 |
Main Dish |
| Kamyar Enshayan is a folk music aficionado and a lifelong soccer fan. He lives in a comfortable house on a shady street in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with his four-year-old daughter, Nettie, and his wife, Laura Jackson, a biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa. They have a large vegetable garden. Laura is expecting their second child in December. Enshayan takes a break from causing trouble. Their existen ... |
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| Topics: Colorado, education, food and agriculture, Iowa, politics (all these topics) |
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Children of the Corn
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Donella H. Meadows |
25 Oct 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| News about genetically engineered crops breaks so fast that it's hard to keep up. For those who look upon biotech foods with suspicion, much of the latest news is surprisingly good. The companies who splice strange genes into our corn and potatoes and soybeans are pushing their products so recklessly that they are alarming not only environmentalists and consumers, but also farmers, supermarket chains, baby-food makers, and investors. They ar ... |
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| Topics: food and agriculture, GMOs, green living (all these topics) |
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An Offer You Can't Refuse
Lisa Hymas reviews God's Last Offer by Ed Ayres |
Lisa Hymas |
05 Oct 1999 |
Arts and Minds |
| God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future by Ed Ayres Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999, 357 pages In 1998, S. Sailam, a farmer living with his pregnant wife and two children in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, found that the pesticide he was spraying on his cotton crop had ceased to do its job. In desperation, he killed himself by squirting the pesticide down his throat. M ... |
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| Topics: food and agriculture, toxics (all these topics) |
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If the Government Says It's Safe, It's Safe, Right?
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Donella H. Meadows |
20 Sep 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| The folks who bring us gene-spliced soybeans, corn, potatoes, and other foods like to make a point of the U.S. government's approval of their products. The feds OK'd it. That must mean biotech foods are safe, right? Right. Sure. This is the government that declared DDT safe and thalidomide and DES and dozens of other drugs, additives, and pesticides that were banned only after they had done grievous harm. Gi ... |
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| Topics: food and agriculture, GMOs, pollution and waste (all these topics) |
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Whom Do We Blame, as We Watch Nature Dry Up?
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Donella H. Meadows |
16 Aug 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| Early this summer, long before the word "drought" was mentioned in the media, our household of farmers was ready to strangle the weather forecasters. "A gorgeous sunny day coming up," they warble. "Another beeyootiful weekend!" To us that means a day of blistering sun, a beeyootiful weekend of irrigating. "City folk!" we mutter, as the forecasters burble on about sun and we p ... |
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| Topics: climate, food and agriculture, New Hampshire (all these topics) |
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Hippie Chicks
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Suzy Becker |
09 Aug 1999 |
Ha. |
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| Topics: food and agriculture (all these topics) |
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Two Mindsets, Two Visions of Sustainable Agriculture
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Donella H. Meadows |
03 Aug 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| "I guess you must be in favor of pesticides," concluded a Monsanto public relations guy, after I objected to his company's genetically engineered potato. "I guess it's okay with you if people starve," said a botanist I deeply respect, with whom I have carried out a fervent argument about genetic engineering. Accusations like these astonish me. I'm an organic farmer; I'm not in favor of p ... |
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| Topics: business, food and agriculture, GMOs (all these topics) |
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There's Farming and Then There's Farming
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Donella H. Meadows |
07 Jun 1999 |
Global Citizen |
| A while ago, Beth Sawin and Phil Rice, researchers at the Sustainability Institute, put together a graph that I can't get out of my mind. It shows Midwest corn yields doubling from about 60 bushels per acre in 1950 to 120 bushels on average today. Despite the doubled yield, gross earnings per acre have stayed essentially constant. The net return to the farmer, after the costs of growing the corn, has also stayed constant, ... |
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| Topics: food and agriculture (all these topics) |
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