Raiding the Bread Basket: Use and Abuse of the Mississippi River Basin
"Industrial agricultural has significant socioeconomic and environmental costs, although scientists are bringing solutions."
"Industrial agricultural has significant socioeconomic and environmental costs, although scientists are bringing solutions."
"Food is getting elbowed out of the discussion on climate change, which could spell disaster for the 1 billion people who will be added to the world's population in the next 15 years. That's the word today from scientists wondering why food and sustainability get such short shrift when it comes to thinking about how humans will adapt to climate change."
Detroit, one of the birthplaces of American industrial capitalism, has also been in many ways one of its earlier deathplaces -- an urban landscape where many houses and lots are abandoned. A conversation with civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs and people she inspires offers a key example of how the urban agriculture movement is reclaiming post-industrial America both physically and spiritually.
Christa Tippett hosts this episode of American Public Media's On Being January 19, 2012.
"The lawsuit over California's approval of a controversial pesticide may hinge on a seemingly straightforward question: Did regulators ever ask themselves what would happen if they didn't approve methyl iodide?"
"The farm bill is a favorite target of budget-cutters and those looking to reduce the size of government, particularly because about 80% of it encompasses food stamps and nutritional programs. However, it also contains some of the most successful conservation programs in our nation’s history, and those are now threatened with the ax, including the popular 1985 Conservation Reserve Program."
In response to a request for live-streaming of the trial, the judge has expanded the gag order for the case, a class-action lawsuit seeking medical monitoring for people who may have been exposed to hazardous chemicals produced at Monsanto's former plant in Nitro, W.V.
"The company that inspected a Colorado cantaloupe farm at the center of a deadly listeriosis outbreak ignored federal regulators' 'best and most timely' advice on processing produce, a congressional committee has found."
"A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder -- a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops."