Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “United States Department of Agriculture”
As part of the growing need to find sustainable ways to provide organic, quality food for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors, more young people have become interested in organic farming. Now new programs are teaching children the importance of self-sustainable farming, and how to farm using age-old techniques. A primary modern issue with farming, in many cases, has been …
George Wuerthner is the Ecological Projects Director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology. He is an ecologist and wildlands activist. He has published 38 books on environmental issues and natural history including such environmentally focused books as Welfare Ranching, Wildfire, Thrillcraft, Energy and most recently Protecting the Wild. Today we talk about beetles. The timber industry and the Forest Service portray beetles as a threat to forests, and as yet another reason forests must be cut down. Wuerthner discusses beetles as keystone species, important to forests, and to those who live in them.
Mark Winne, an author and anti-hunger activist, often says that the most important word in “community garden” isn’t “garden.” I saw this firsthand not long ago. Standing in the sun between several small garden plots all morning, it may not have looked like much was going on. A few people stood in a circle, chatting. Occasionally, one would leave, or …
Part I: Michael Bedar, Sweet Healing: A Whole Health Journey
Michael Bedar is an avid natural foods and health researcher and author, and the Co-Director of the East Bay Healing Collective in Berkeley, California. He graduated from UC San Diego where he studied and researched Environmental Health. Later, for his master’s thesis at the Cousens School of Holistic Wellness, he surveyed 200 people on their happiness and satisfaction with their nutrition and health outcomes, and turned the data into a page-turner of a parable, the acclaimed novel, Sweet Healing: A Whole Health Journey. Learn more about Sweet Healing at www.readsweethealing.com. Bedar is also the Associate Producer of several hit documentaries about the natural world, food, and health. He has been a natural health guide for ten years.
A major global public health crisis may soon be produced by the wholesale use of antibiotics in the food of healthy farm animals. The resistance factors produced by shoveling antibiotics into animal food produces resistance factors (plasmids) which can easily be transferred to human pathogens. A related problem is the excessive use of pesticides and artificial fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers in agriculture. …
Are you aware that in the United States, nearly 40% of the food produced is tossed into the trash? As it makes its way to the landfill, 795 million people in the world wonder where their next meal will come from. It’s ridiculous – as well as disheartening, which is why activists around the planet are doing their part to help reduce food waste and …
Officially, Big Food is not worried about the small number of “fringe” food activists who object to cruel, unhealthful and environmentally destructive products. But unofficially, it is a different story. American Egg Board CEO Joanne Ivy stepped down in apparent disgrace this fall when a 2013 email she wrote to a consultant saying the board was accepting “your offer to …
This looks like a humble black work boot with a filthy white sock over it. But it actually is a secret weapon in the fight against salmonella, a microscopic bacteria that can make people sick. Danish farmers wear socks over their work boots when they’re in chicken houses to gather samples of the manure, which is tested for salmonella. Credit: …
The recent Department of Agriculture announcement that it would allocate $34.3 million to support local food systems was met with skepticism by many in the sustainable farming and food justice movements. Many organizations doing food systems work in the most vulnerable communities find USDA grants too competitive, bureaucratic, short-term, and daunting to be worth the effort. The USDA has historically …
A prominent Agriculture Department scientist is alleging that he was suspended after complaining that the agency was blocking his research into the harmful effects of pesticides on pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. In a whistleblower complaint filed Wednesday, Jonathan Lundgren, an entomologist and 11-year veteran of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, says his supervisors retaliated against him by suspending …
