Tag archives for Agriculture
Carbon Dioxide Milestone Revised by NOAA
Posted by Tim Profeta of Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University on May 16, 2013 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last week that carbon dioxide concentrations at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii surpassed the milestone 400 parts per million for a sustained period. NOAA has since revised the figure—on the basis of computer analysis—saying its May 9 readings actually remained fractions of a point below the historic level, coming in at…
Explosive Agriculture and That Larger April Fireball
Posted by Dan Klotz on April 29, 2013 
Two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a humongous explosion rocked the Texas town of West when a fire broke out at an agriculture retail facility storing ammonium nitrate. 14 people were killed, more than 200 injured, but despite leaving a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep, the incident played second fiddle in…
Posted by As temperatures in Southern Iraq approached 52 degrees Celsius (126°F) last July, Habib Salman, a 52-year-old farmer in the Al-Islah township, shot himself in the head, leaving behind an eleven-member family. The stream on which their farm relied had recently dried up, jeopardizing his family’s survival.
Nusa Penida: Black Magic Island, Part II
Posted by IZILWANE on January 9, 2013 
By Altaire Cambata All Photos Courtesy of Justin May/Interwoven Multicolored quarter-sized candy wrappers, amassed by the fist full, were slipping through my gloves on my thirtieth trip to the trash bag in the corner of the lot. I crouched again, my dirty knees hovering above the aged, twisted plastic, the remnants of a bygone…
Posted by “We are cheetah friendly”. The sign hangs on the gates of farms who participate in Cheetah Outreach’s Livestock Guardian Dog Program. In a land where commercial farming has encroached on wildlife for generations, certain NGOs and farmers are working together to create new ways of solving the problems of predation. Cheetah Outreach comes not…
Conservation Plus Agriculture Equals True Food Security
Posted by Wildlife Conservation Society on November 8, 2012 The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that to feed the world’s growing population over the next 40 years we must find ways to increase food production by 60 percent. Most proposed solutions target demand alone by increasing crop yields. An alternative approach gaining increased attention recognizes the mutual dependency of agriculture and conservation. The results are promising – putting more food on more tables while bringing additional benefits to the environment and rural communities.
Can National Happiness Survive on an Organic Diet?
Posted by Dan Klotz on October 18, 2012 
The small kingdom of Bhutan is known for establishing the “gross national happiness” tool, a “multidimensional measurement” that looks at its citizens’ quality of life and well-being. Lately, it has been making waves for its government’s ambition to become the first 100% organic country in the world. Its only competition? The Pacific Island of…
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The following piece was originally published at ClimateProgress.org. If half the Grand Canyon crumbled to nothing in less than three decades, would we stand up and pay attention? If Teddy and Abe’s heads eroded off Mount Rushmore would we step in to save George and Tom? Sadly, that’s what is happening to one of the…
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World Water Week—an annual conference in Stockholm dedicated to discussing the management of global water resources—opened Monday with a message about cleaning your plate.
Food waste, according to experts at the conference, accounts for significant water waste.
A third to a half of all food grown globally either sits untouched on our plates or rots before it even gets there. A new report from the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) states that 40 percent of food purchased in the U.S. is thrown away. And a new documentary called Taste the Waste highlights the problem. Watch the trailer.
Can Banning Big Gulps have an Environmental Benefit?
Posted by Dan Klotz on July 9, 2012 
At the end of May, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on “Big Gulps” in the Big Apple. Food service establishments would not be able to sell “sugary drinks”—defined as non-alcoholic beverages that are not more than half made up of milk or milk substitute and are sweetened by the manufacturer with…
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We need to drastically modify global agriculture by incorporating trees into the farming environment. The world stands at a critical juncture in the second decade of the 21st century. International policymakers have begun to face the unspeakable possibility that we might be running out of food and the land to grow it. Staggeringly, we need…
The Farm Bill Rollercoaster Gets Ready to Roll
Posted by Dan Klotz on June 5, 2012 
This week, the Senate began debating the “Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012,”the latest name for the Farm Bill. This legislation comes up for renewal every five years, and the back-and-forth always been larger than life and somewhat crazy. If you follow the coverage closely this year, you’ll learn about Southern peanut and rice…
Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Anthropology and Climate Change
Posted by IZILWANE on April 5, 2012 
What are the implications for indigenous or place-based cultures facing the imminent and gradually destructive processes of climate change? There is a significant amount of literature that suggests the most vulnerable, natural resource-dependent groups of the world will disproportionately experience the harmful effects of climate change. Less developed countries and their indigenous populations are largely…
Posted by The fertile alluvium deposited by the mighty Indus river and its tributaries in Pakistan have given the country’s demographic heartland of Punjab an agrarian edge. Yet, errant canal planning and over-pumping from tube-wells have degraded vast tracts of land. Salinity and water-logging afflicts around 6.3 million hectares of land and an additional 4,000 hectare…
Humanity’s Growing Impact on the World’s Freshwater
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on February 17, 2012 
As the human population has climbed past seven billion, and the consumption per person of everything from burgers to blue jeans has risen inexorably, the finiteness of Earth’s freshwater is becoming ever more apparent. It takes water to make everything, and the explosion of demand for all manner of products is draining rivers, shrinking…
Posted by Many people believe communications technology helps the developing world by allowing people to link up with the ‘West’ and be given information and knowledge. It is often people in the developing world with the knowledge, and what technology can instead do is help them unlock that knowledge and share it with one another. Eugenio Tisselli…
As Population Tops 7 Billion, Time to Revisit Climate Approaches
Posted by Mason Inman on November 3, 2011 The world population reached seven billion people around October 31, according to United Nations estimates. The actual date is a bit fuzzy, but the milestone has nonetheless had great symbolic power, triggering a stream of articles on population issues. Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times, argued family planning is the solution to many of the world’s ills,…
As modern communication becomes more ubiquitous in the developing world, increasingly working its way into the lives of rural communities, opportunities to use mobile phones to connect people with each other and the outside world continue to grow. In this edition of Digital Diversity, Clare Salisbury – a recent MA in Multimedia Broadcast Journalism at…
You don’t have to spend long in many African agricultural markets to realise the need for better information. Farmers lack prices, traders need transport and new contacts, projects and governments need a better way to reach out to people, businesses lack real-time updates on their stock and the value of their harvests. The list goes…
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Originally published on Turnstylenews.com, a digital information service surfacing emerging stories in news, entertainment, art and culture. Powered by award-winning journalists, Turnstyle is a project of Youth Radio. By: Nelson Harvey I am a 25-year-old college graduate with a degree from a fairly prestigious eastern university, and I pull weeds for a living. At first…
Famine in Somalia
Posted by Anne Marie Houppert on August 22, 2011 
The UN has declared a famine in southern Somalia. How did Somalia become a failed state, and are we facing a perpetual global food crisis? Revisit National Geographic articles for some answers.
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“We’re using tomorrow’s water to meet today’s food demand,” warned Sandra Postel, National Geographic Freshwater Fellow, helping to provoke a meaningful discussion on water as it relates to food at the Aspen Environmental Forum. Agriculture was a central theme as it consumes a disproportionate share of global water resources. Jon Foley from the University of…
In today’s installment of the special series Digital Diversity, Amy O’Donnell takes a look at how radio is being combined with mobile phone text messaging to better connect smallholder farmers with local agricultural programmes in Kenya. Digital Diversity is a series of blog posts about how mobile phones are being used throughout the world to…
