Features Archive

Luis Pacheco, MD: Facing the Hispanic Health Crisis

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Gotham Greens: Sustainable Farming in the Big Apple

by Bruce Boyers,

Our system of factory agriculture is exacting a great toll on our planet: 40 percent of the land and 70 percent of the fresh water on Earth is devoted to the growing of food, which, in the process, creates some 30 percent of greenhouse gases. Compounding these issues is the fact that commercial produce is often transported thousands or even tens of thousands of miles to its point of sale, consuming tons of fossil fuel. It is evident that our current agricultural model is a failed experiment in search of a more sustainable solution.

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The Lappés: Big Solutions for a Small Planet

Despite the billions of dollars spent by mega-corporations in an effort to promote and keep the unsustainable industrial food system in place, there is growing recognition of the need to radically change the way we produce and consume food. A good part of the responsibility for that insight rests squarely on the shoulders of pioneers such as author, speaker and self-described “possibilist” Frances Moore Lappé. Frances sowed the seeds of a food revolution with her best-selling Diet for a Small Planet back in 1971 and has published some 17 books since that time, in addition to having traveled and spoken all over the world. Frances’s daughter, Anna Lappé, has become a best-selling author, speaker and food activist in her own right. Anna’s most recent book, Diet for a Hot Planet, empowers readers to fight climate change with their dietary choices and advocacy for sustainable food systems.

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Helena Norberg-Hodge: The Economics of Happiness

by Bruce Boyers,

Back in the early nineties, I had occasion to spend a fair amount of time in a Mexican village called Ajijic, on the shores of Mexico’s largest freshwater lake, Lake Chapala. Looking back, I can see now that I was there in the midst of a very pivotal event: the encroachment of a global economy on what had once been a thriving local economy. Daily, still making their way up and down the town’s cobblestoned streets were local merchants of all kinds, selling lake-caught fish, handmade furniture, ice cream, water and many other products. The weekly open-air market sold locally grown fruits and vegetables (the tastiest I’ve ever had to this day), meats, and handmade nonedible products as well.

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Traceability: Tracking from Farm to Fork

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in six (roughly 48 million people) get sick annually from foodborne diseases. Along with various scares and recalls, public awareness of food has increased due to popular cooking shows on The Food Channel, the prevalence of celebrity chefs, and documentary films such as Food, Inc. that peek behind the marketing façade of our industrial food system. This awareness is evidenced in the popularity of farmers’ markets as well as a growing demand for organic produce and free-range, grass-fed, humanely treated farm animals.

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Chile’s Rio Futaleufú: Saving an Endangered River

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Chef Tony Geraci Is Cafeteria Man

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Greensburg, Kansas: Rebuilding the Future

The plants and trees along Main Street—completely illuminated at night with LED lighting—are watered from a system that captures and filters rainwater. The county courthouse, while retaining its original 1914 facade, features a geothermal heating and cooling system, a 15,000-gallon rainwater cistern, and high-efficiency windows. The school has its own on-site wind generator, a ground-source heat pump system, and its exterior is built of reclaimed wood from trees damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-eight structures in the town are either built to or have achieved some of the highest sustainability standards attainable. In addition, 100 percent of the town’s power is met with offsets from a nearby wind farm, consisting of ten wind turbines, each providing 1.25 megawatts of power.

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GMOs and Pesticides—What Concerns Scientists

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You don’t have to be Einstein

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Chef Greg Christian: Street-Smart Sustainability

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Fred Kirschenmann: The New Food Revolution

“My friend Bill Heffernan, who is a retired rural sociologist at the University of Missouri, told me once that if the modern food system were to choose an appropriate motto for itself, it would be Just Eat It,” Fred Kirschenmann tells Organic Connections. “In other words, we do not want people to have a voice about the food system. They should just go into the supermarket and buy their food, or go into a restaurant and eat their food—without any knowledge of where it comes from or any other form of engagement.

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Queen of the Sun: Documenting the Plight of Bees

With the many issues facing the survival of our planet today, documentary films have taken a major role in conveying information and viewpoints often omitted by advertiser-supported mainstream media, and in motivating viewers to action in solving some of these matters. An inspirational example is a new documentary called Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, through which director Taggart Siegel and producer Jon Betz lovingly show us the natural truth of bees and what must be done to save this disappearing but enormously vital link in our food chain.

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Matt Briggs: Environmental Solutionist

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Chef Peter Berley: The Power of Food

by Bruce Boyers,

It has become clear that if we’re to survive as a species—both from an environmental and a health point of view—we must grow our food sustainably and locally. It is a torch that Chef Peter Berley has been carrying for some 40 years, and he is now dedicated to bringing the beauty, nutrition and flavor of local, seasonal food to everyone—by putting people directly in touch with food sources and teaching them how to fully enjoy the bounty of the harvest.

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Sacred Headwaters: Documenting God’s Country

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Andrew Kimbrell: The GMO Reality Check

When GMOs (genetically modified organisms) were first promoted back in the early nineties, it sounded as if the world was about to be saved from famine. These altered crops would produce much higher yields and the hungry could finally be fed. For regions of the planet where there was little rainfall, plants could be made drought resistant. Vitamins could be introduced, making genetically modified produce more nutritious. Crops would be made resilient to pests and could grow in spite of them. And lastly—the bit of information that would ease all other worries—there would be virtually no difference between these and conventionally grown crops that came before them.

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Wolfgang Puck: Living, Loving, Eating

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American Forests: Preserving Our Green Legacy

by Bruce Boyers,

For me, trees have always been a source of rare and exquisite beauty. I spent the first six years of my childhood in the mountain community of Idyllwild, California—and some of the towering, gnarled, sweet-smelling pines that surrounded my youth had such forceful personalities that I all but named them. I certainly never forgot them; when returning as an adult, it was almost instinctual to seek them out and say hello, and to practically cry if I found one had been cut down.

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Organic Report 2011

The organic industry has gone through major expansion in the last few years, fueled by a steadily increasing awareness of the importance of real food.

News has surfaced about the dangers of pesticides remaining in purchased comestibles, and food-related health issues such as diabetes and obesity have become so prominent that even First Lady Michelle Obama has become involved. All of these factors have led a growing number of consumers to seek out food that is safer and more nutritious; summed into one word, that means organic.

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Andrew Kimbrell: The Role of Organic in Food Safety

If you were ever looking for an advocate when it comes to food safety, you couldn’t do any better than Andrew Kimbrell. He is a public interest attorney, activist and author. He has been on the front lines of public interest legal activity in technology, human health and the environment for most of his adult life. In 1997 he established the Center for Food Safety, and he currently serves as its executive director. This organization is responsible for knocking down effort after effort of biotechnology giants to pollute our agriculture—and endanger our health—with GMOs, and is directly challenging other harmful technologies such as food irradiation and nanotechnology.

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Frances Moore Lappé: Building a Living Democracy

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Philip and Alice Shabecoff: Environmental Toxins and Our Children

Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill by Philip and Alice Shabecoff is an amazingly comprehensive work on the subject of environmental toxins. It details specific chemical, heavy metal and radioactive pollutions, diseases that run parallel to them, and who is responsible. It also makes an impassioned plea for changes needed in our system to create a safer world in which our children can grow up.

How the book came to be is an illustration of the way that conscience can lead someone to profound and influencing actions.

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Anna Lappé: The Real Food Revolution

Renowned author and food activist Anna Lappé has spent most of her adult life working to bring about a badly needed change in our industrial food system.

Her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, is the author of 17 books including the bestseller Diet for a Small Planet, and Anna herself is now a national best-selling author and sought-after public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization and social change. Listed in Time magazine’s “Who’s Who: The Eco-Guide,” Anna has been featured in the New York Times, Gourmet, O: The Oprah Magazine, Domino, Food & Wine, Body + Soul, Natural Health and Vibe, as well as many other publications.

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