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Price of Growth. Dear Readers: I’m currently writing a long-form post twice a month now for Chris Martenson’s excellent website. Accordingly, I’ll be publishing the first (and free) part of these essays here at Gregor.us. Enjoy. — Gregor Growth. It’s what every economist and politician wants. There is growing evidence that a major US policy shift is underway to boost growth. While that’s welcome news to just about everyone, the story is much less appealing when one understands the cost at which such growth comes. Resurrecting American Export Strength It’s easy to be skeptical that America could once again be a titan of global exports.

For a very long time, that role has mostly been relegated to countries in the developing world. A multi-decade outsourcing wave has left US workers to concentrate in the financial sector — an over-weighting of talent we would come to regret after the crisis year, 2008. With that declaration, notice was served. Rivers of Coal The small city of St. New Energy Equations. One Acre Feeds a Person : : Farmland LP. With the holiday season behind us many are feeling the effects of eating a bit too much and are working on a New Year’s resolution to shed some pounds. This reminds me of a question I have been asked numerous times, i.e., “How much land does it take to feed somebody for a year?” To rid you of any suspense, I usually give the answer as about one acre when referring to the U.S. today. For those who want to understand why, what follows is an explanation. Start with the Diet A precise answer is impossible because so many variable factors are at play, including the productivity of the agricultural land.

But actually, the first step in answering this is to know the diet being considered (including any big holiday turkeys consumed). To summarize, the average American consumes about 2000 lbs of food per year, which works out to about 5.5 lbs and 2700 calories per day–or nearly your entire body weight in food per month. Converting to Area Below I have posted a key summary graphic from the paper. Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon. P2P Essay of the Day: Hacking_the_Food_System.

The future of urban agriculture is not vertical, nor even simply horizontal. It is distributed and networked throughout the city. In a growing number of cities, suburbs,and small towns, community groups and entrepreneurs have discovered innovative ways to harvest and grow food, using interconnected networks of relatively small plots of public and private land and shared resources. In the process, they are forging novel relationships among producers and consumers. * Special Issue: Food+Tech Connect – how can information and technology be used to hack the food system?

Read the above special issue if you want to learn about the following trends in p2p agriculture and food production: 1. Social Food Cooperatives 2. (or find them in the specialized section of our own wiki, along with many other agrifood trends that are peer-driven, see here) We’re excerpting from the contribution and introduction by Nevin Cohen: “The future of urban agriculture is not vertical, nor even simply horizontal. Amid Economic Strife, Greeks Look to Farming Past. Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times Vassilis Ballas and his wife, Roula Boura, extracted the gum from a mastic tree on their 400-tree farm in Chios, Greece. As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future. They acknowledge that it is a peculiar undertaking, with more manual labor than they, as college graduates, ever imagined doing. But in a country starved by austerity even as it teeters on the brink of default, it seemed as good a gamble as any.

Mr. Gavalas and Ms. Tricha chose to move back to his native Chios, an Aegean island closer to Izmir, Turkey, than to Athens. “When I call my friends and relatives in Athens, they tell me there’s no hope, everything is going from bad to worse,” Ms. Enrollment in agricultural schools is also on the rise. Mr. “It was a personal decision,” Mr.

Groundwater Dropping Globally. Groundwater Dropping Globally. Groundwater levels have dropped in many places across the globe over the past nine years, a pair of gravity-monitoring satellites finds. This trend raises concerns that farmers are pumping too much water out of the ground in dry regions., says Science News Water has been disappearing beneath southern Argentina, western Australia and stretches of the United States. The decline is especially pronounced in parts of California, India, the Middle East and China, where expanding agriculture has increased water demand. “Groundwater is being depleted at a rapid clip in virtually of all of the major aquifers in the world's arid and semiarid regions,” says Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling in Irvine, whose team presented the new trends December 6 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

China, for example, has been shown to underestimate groundwater use. In some areas, short-term climate variability may be to blame. A Punch to the Mouth: Food Price Volatility Hits the World. Perfect Storms 2011 was an abysmal year for the global insurance industry, which had to cover yet another enormous increase in damages from natural disasters. Unknown to most casual observers is the fact that during the past few decades the frequency of weather-related disasters (floods, fires, storms) has been growing at a much faster pace than geological disasters (such as earthquakes).

This spread between the two types of insurable losses has moved so strongly that it prompted Munich Re to note in a late 2010 letter that weather-related disasters due to wind have doubled and flooding events have tripled in frequency since 1980. The world now has to contend with a much higher degree of risk from weather and climate volatility, and this has broad-reaching implications. And critically, it has a particular impact on food. Commodity observers will note the rough correspondence with oil prices, and of course that’s no mistake.

Food Stamp Nation The above chart of L.A. Indian Government Files Biopiracy Lawsuit Against Monsanto. Source: Jonathan Benson – Natural News Representing one of the most agriculturally bio-diverse nations in the world, India has become a primary target for biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Cargill to spread their genetically-modified (GM) crops into new markets. However, a recent France 24 report explains that the Indian government has decided to take an offensive approach against this attempted agricultural takeover by suing Monsanto for “biopiracy,” accusing the company of stealing India’s indigenous plants in order to re-engineer them into patented varieties. Brinjal, also known in Western nations as eggplant, is a native Indian crop for which there are roughly 2,500 different unique varieties. Millions of Indian farmers grow brinjal, which is used in a variety of Indian food dishes, and the country grows more than a quarter of the world’s overall supply of the vegetable.

“This can send a different message to the big companies for violating the laws of the nation,” said K.S. More Proof That Young People Are Giving Up On The American Dream of A House In The Suburbs. Urban Land Institute/via There are many in America who don't like or trust cities, primarily because they harbor a disproportionate number of Democratic voters. They don't like investments in transit, either, preferring the privacy and freedom of the car. But whether they like it or not, America is changing. Amanda Eaken of the NRDC points to a new study from the Urban Land Institute, The New California Dream. (PDF here) The subtitle says it all: How Demographic and Economic Trends May Shape the Housing Market.. Amanda notes the key findings: First, the existing supply—that’s right, today’s stock—of conventional lot (> 1/8th acre) single-family detached homes exceeds the projected demand for these homes in 2035.

There is no need for building another single family detached house, period, for the next 23 years. So if people don’t want to live in these homes, where do they want to live? The demographics have changed. Toxic botulism in animals linked to RoundUp | Food Freedom. Dr Mercola recently interviewed Dr Don Huber, whose letter to the USDA warning that Monsanto’s RoundUp, a broad-spectrum “herbicide” that has been linked with spontaneous abortion in animals, continues to be ignored by food and environmental safety authorities.

In this important hour-long discussion, Huber, a plant pathologist for over 50 years, explains how RoundUp is destroying our healthy soils by killing needed microorganisms. Not only did his team discover a new soil pathogen, but he reports that animals are coming down with over 40 new diseases, like toxic botulism. Huber explains that before the widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and genetically modified food and feed, natural probiota would have kept Clostridium botulinum in check. Mercola provided a full transcript and highlights some of the main points (excerpted): Glyphosate Destroys Soil Microorganisms, which Denatures Food Without Healthy Soils, Human Health is Decimated According to Dr. “It’s not a fungus.

The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat: How to Buy, Cut, and Cook Great Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, and More (9780307716620): Joshua Applestone, Jessica Applestone, Alexandra Zissu. Eating Animals - Nicolette Hahn Niman - Health. Why a group of longtime vegetarians and vegans converted to the idea that flesh and other food from animals can be healthful, environmentally appropriate, and ethical As Americans gather around holiday tables this year, many of us will be setting places for vegetarians and vegans. In some families, diverse diets co-exist peacefully. In others, well ... maybe there's a health-obsessed uncle who relishes warning that "Meat will kill you! " Or an idealistic college student, eager to regale her complacent elders with grim details of the cruelty and environmental damage wrought by factory farms. Or omnivores who resent the suggestion that they should worry -- or feel guilty -- about eating meat. The three of us can relate to both sides of such discussions.

Nicolette: I gave up meat as a freshman biology major after hearing that beef was deforesting the Amazon. As any attentive observer of nature knows, life feeds on life. In short, eating animal-derived foods is not a health risk. Image: R. #Goteo: Validating an irrigation system for the commons. This post from Goteo describes the state and successes of the project so far: Photo source: Botanicalls Kits, based on arduino let plants reach out for human help!

They offer a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates to your mobile phone We’ll start this post citing one of the best shared resources on the Internet - wikipedia: “Drip irrigation, also known as “drop by drop irrigation”, is an irrigation method used in arid zones which permits the optimum use of water and fertiliser.” Here at Goteo we’ve been trying out this same system in a digital way for 40 days. And after helping “water” to arrive in the form of monetary and other resources to projects which deserve to grow, we can confirm that it works. We’re just beginning and so it’s been necessary to fertilise thoroughly through media diffusion, creating alliances for decisive help, constant feedback with a lot of people – but the system functions. Lessons and achievements Carry on watering. The New Rules: India's Pastoral Ideal an Obstacle to Globalized Future. When most people think of revolutions, they imagine the overthrow of political orders.

By contrast, most of what we see today in globalization’s continued expansion is not violent political revolution, but rather unsettling socio-economic revolution. Yes, when existing political orders cannot process that change -- and the angry populism that typically accompanies it -- they can most definitely fall. This is what we have seen in the Arab Spring to date. But more often this populism leads to political paralysis in countries both democratic and authoritarian. A case in point is the recent controversy in India over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s plan, since scrapped, to allow multinational retail chains like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco to mount joint ventures with local firms in direct retail sales operations. The public uproar showed that at times, globalization is simply too much change, too fast. Map the Meal Gap | Food Insecurity in your county.

Study: Hunger stalks US cities as poverty rises. By Reuters WASHINGTON -- A growing number of families in the United States are struggling to put food on the table as poverty rises in major cities, a new survey showed on Thursday. The U.S. Conference of Mayors' 2011 hunger and homelessness survey found all but four of the 29 cities surveyed reported an increase in requests for emergency food assistance during the period between September 2010 and August 2011. Half of those asking for emergency food assistance were people in families, while 26 percent were employed. The elderly accounted for 19 percent, with the homeless making up the remaining 11 percent. This is the latest survey to underscore the magnitude of the damage inflicted by the 2007-09 recession.

Though the downturn ended 2-1/2 years ago, the recovery has been very slow by historical standards as households struggle to repair their balance sheets and unemployment is at an uncomfortably high 8.6 percent. More content from msnbc.com and NBC News: How To Wage War On Food Waste. Illustration by Alison Seiffer Two Saturdays after Thanksgiving, I slept in. At around 11 a.m., I padded into the living room with a feeling of quiet contentment. My husband, Peter, had been up for a few hours, during which time he'd read the paper, made coffee, cleaned out the fridge, and taken out the trash. Our refrigerator had been getting difficult to close, jammed as it was with two-week-old turkey scraps, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and other Thanksgiving leftovers that nobody had eaten, plus the wilting greens and vegetables that never became salad.

There were partially full containers of sour milk, dried-out slabs of poorly wrapped cheese, and three half-full tubs of hummus. Peter had cleared it all out, and I was aghast. That was my job, I said. Peter stared back, perplexed. I mean, my job, I insisted -- as in researching the environmental impact of food waste. Peter and I are part of a much larger problem. I'm working on the first "R" (Reduce!)

How food manufacturers turn mouldy, mislabelled or outright contaminated foods into edible -- and profitable -- goods. By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 15:43 GMT, 29 November 2011 The packaging methods and sanitary standards used by food companies are being questioned as more information comes to light of ways that companies cut corners to keep costs low. The discovery of mould in apple sauce packages that was then distributed to school children prompted a warning from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month. But the widespread nature of 'reconditioning', a process used by food companies to help salvage food that has gone bad, makes the investigation applicable to all food producers.

What they're really eating: Critics question the guidelines of acceptable standards offered to food producers by the Food and Drug Administration Snokist Growers, the Washington-based company that received the stern talk from FDA officials after their apple sauce packages rife with green, brown, white and grey mould this August, was the latest example of a common practice. The heat-blasting technique is common. Farmageddon−The Unseen War to Shut Down American Family Farms America’s right to access fresh foods of their choice is under attack | James J Puplava CFP. Not Past or Future, but Present. WorldWatch: With 370 Million Tons of Food Lost or Wasted Each Year, "We Can't Afford to Overlook Simple, Low-Cost Fixes"

UN food agency stunner: World loses one-third of total global food production. 10 Tips to Reduce Food Waste During the Holidays. The Orwellian Efficiency of a “Being Fat” Tax. Lessons of the Listeria Outbreak: Do Locavores Make Us Less Safe? The Inefficiency of Local Food. The Resilient Family » The coming decentralization of food production. The Surprising Number of "Near Poor"

How Much More Food Must the World Produce? « Around the Coast Mountains. China's grain output in danger. Producing for our own consumption: generalizing the Scott Bader experience. Zagat: LA's 10 Best Food Trucks. Gregor.us.