Red Pepper Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Je Préfère... New process could allow any plant to serve as a food source Virginia Tech associate professor Percival Zhang is leading the research on the bioprocess Although the causes of world hunger are numerous, it certainly doesn’t help that factors such as arid conditions and limited land space make it difficult to grow food crops in certain places. If people in those areas could eat foods derived from plants that are hardy to the region, but that aren’t considered nutritious, it would go a long way towards addressing the problem. Cellulose is the most common carbohydrate on Earth, and is found in the cell walls of plants. In the new process, developed by a Virginia Tech team led by associate professor Percival Zhang, approximately 30 percent of the cellulose from any plant material (including agricultural waste) can be converted into a starch known as amylose – it’s a good source of fiber, as it isn’t broken down in the digestive tract. “Cellulose and starch have the same chemical formula,” said Zhang. Source: Virginia Tech About the Author
New Left Review - NLR 86, March-April 2014 Navdanya Place Publique - Média citoyen, relais d’engagements associatifs et outil de démocratie participative Pétitions et campagnes sur le net Des associations battent campagne Des associations et des ONG qui mènent campagne. Tour d’horizon. La Conférence Permanente des Coordinations Associatives : une plate-forme de propositions pour une reconnaissance par les pouvoirs publics de l'importance de l'activité associative et de la nécessité de la soutenir pour ce qu'elle est et ce qu'elle fait. "Face (...) Conférence Permanente des Coordinations Associatives : une plate-forme de propositions pour une reconnaissance par les pouvoirs publics de l’importance de l’activité associative et de la nécessité de la soutenir pour ce qu’elle est et ce qu’elle fait. Crid est à l’initiative de la campagne "Etat d’urgence planétaire : votons pour une France solidaire !" site a été créé à l’initiative de Hubert Reeves et de la Ligue Roc. Quelques lettres d’info citoyennes sur le net
Community Gardening: The Plot Against Hunger Christina Sarich, Contributor Waking Times What if you could grow more than 3 tons of organic produce, flowers and herbs annually for an entire community on less than an acre of land? Sound impossible? Not only do community gardens draw people to together from various backgrounds regarding their age, race, culture and social class, they also grow more than food – the involvement in social community usually leads to long term relationships among people that might not ordinarily ‘network.’ I recently spent an entire Saturday afternoon at one of my local community gardens, one of a dozen or more scattered throughout the city proper and one of literally a hundred or more spread throughout nearby suburbs. I was surprised to learn the other benefits of community gardening that weren’t so apparent upon first glance: Community gardening reduces crime rates . You can check out the American Community Gardening Association if you live in the US, and there are similar websites throughout the world.
ROAR Magazine 350.org Australia listes Replacing food: An engineer's approach to body fuel There's a romance to food. It's one of life's great sensory and social pleasures. But a lot of us don't eat healthily, and a lot of us don't enjoy the process of preparing food, especially when we're eating alone. Furthermore, the way we eat today is incredibly wasteful throughout the entire production and consumption process, to the point where it actively damages our bodies and our planet. Enter Soylent: a food engineered to efficiently deliver 100 percent of the healthy body's needs with minimal waste, junk food-beating convenience and a very low cost, or, as the inventors put it, "creating an efficient form of fuel for humanity for the first time in history." Food has always been sexy, and this sounds about as exciting as artificial insemination. View all This is a tough project to look at objectively, because food ranks alongside sex and sleep as one of the great pleasures of life. Secondly, a lot of us aren't very good at it. And thus was born Soylent. Sounds exciting, right?
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