In this weekly series we have been discussing the many benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health , food safety, animal rights (turkey) , global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/resource depletion/public health
Join Dennis Kucinich for Thanksgiving Dinner
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including : better health, animal rights, food safety, global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/resource depletion (pdf)
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights, frugal living, global food crisis, food safety and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources
In this week’s episode, Nourishing the Planet research intern, Elena Davert, introduces a counter-intuitive method of cleaning water. In 2004 Peter Njodzeka founded the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) with a rather simple goal. “ I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water,” he said. “And we kept expanding. That’s how it started.” Now, LWDGC, with support from Engineers without Borders (EWB) and Thirst Relief International, is teaching households how to use dirt and bacteria to clean their water, greatly improving the quality of drinking water and all but eliminating diseases caused by contaminated water.
Here is the link: http://bit.ly/...
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: public health, global food crisis, animal rights , food safety, better health and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources/public health
because of increases in population and per capita consumption we will have to cut back on meat between 19-42% by 2050 just to keep environmental damage at current levels.
"a profound disconnect between the anticipated scale of potential environmental impacts associated with projected livestock production levels and even the most optimistic mitigation strategies."
in really simple terms: More meat means more greenhouse gas emissions, more nitrogen runoff and pollution, and more land needed for grazing or to grow food for animals which humans will eat.
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including:better health, animal rights, food safety, frugal living, global food crisis and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change.
Here is where we get to work and celebrate climate solutions
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health , animal rights, frugal living, global food crisis , food safety, and the direct relationship between meat production and climate change.
Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says
"Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health , frugal living, food safety, animal rights, global food crisis and the immense contribution of livestock production to climate change/depletion of resources .
1 pound of beef consumes more water than showering for 6 months
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights, food safety, frugal living, global food crisis and the huge contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources
Nitrous oxide is about 300 and methane about 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly methane and nitrous oxide, have increased steadily. In 2005 they accounted for 14 percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
By 2055 the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture could be cut by more than eighty percent, researchers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research find
Today, the FDA issued inspection reports on the two egg farms involved in a recall of half a billion eggs for salmonella contamination, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. Conditions were, shall we say, less than optimal.
The inspectors found manure piles up to 8 feet high, holding doors open and giving wildlife access. "Wildlife" included live rodents, wild birds and a plague of flies, live and dead, including their larvae (maggots). "Additional problems included overflowing manure pits, improper worker sanitation and wild birds [a potential source of avian influenza] roosting around feed bins," reports the New York Times.
The investigators also found salmonella bacteria in chicken feed and in barn and walkway areas, and in water used to wash eggs at a Hillandale facility. It isn't clear, yet, which came first: the salmonella or the egg.
I wrote in late May about industrial food production, as an exemplar of a general thesis that complexity breeds collapse. And here we go again: news in the U.S. press this week skews heavily toward eggs contaminated with salmonella. Not just one or two eggs. We're talking "recall of a half-billion eggs from two mega-farms in Iowa" according to Friday's San Francisco Chronicle.
I, for one, hope that this is true, and will be further substantiated:
Study: Petroleum-eating microbes significantly reduced gulf oil plume
David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer -- Tue, August 24, 2010
Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor - proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.
The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing that reduced the amount of oil amounts in the undersea "plume" by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.
The findings, by a team of scientists led by Terry C. Hazen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California [...]
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health , animal rights, frugal living, global food crisis, food safety and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources.
What You Eat Is More Important Than Where It Came From
"Where you get your food from is a relevant factor in family food decisions, but what you are eating - and the processes needed to make it - is much more important from a climate change perspective,''
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: food safety , animal rights, better health, global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources
Writing in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Xiaobo Xue and Amy Landis examine which foods contribute most to ocean dead zones through nitrogen pollution and compared this with their carbon footprint, as established by previous studies. Red meat topped both footprint lists, making it the food with the greatest impact on both climate change and eutrophication: Eating a pound of beef creates about 22 lb of greenhouse gases and about 2.5 oz of nitrogen pollution. Cereals and carbohydrates had the smallest footprints, with each pound of food releasing only 3 lb of greenhouse gases and almost no nitrogen pollution.
Read about Integrated Pest Management - a method of growing crops with minimizes the use of pesticides.
This is the second of three parts of an interview with plant geneticist Pamela Ronald and her husband, organic farmer Raoul Adamchak. They are co-authors of the book Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Check out Nourishing the Planet for more and our Daily Kos diary on Tuesday for the first part of the series.
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights, food safety, global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
70 million gallons of gas -- enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
Dear Mr. President:
I'm a small farmer,which means I'm a blue collar entrepreneur. I don't mind hard work, and I don't need fancy benefits. All I want to do is to take care of my family, my farm, my animals, my community and the welfare of the country. But every time I try to do what I know will work, I meet another regulation/rule/legislation/policy that makes it impossible or impractical.
I raise the smallest of dairy goats, which make the smallest hoofprints on the planet, contribute to the soil, diversity of the farmyard, health of my family, and make the most amazing milk for cheese and yogurt. But they don't make enough to meet most industrial standards for equipment. I don't want to have different goats, and more goats isn't an option because of the nutrition and space needs that they have. But I don't need more goats, if the regulations were reasonable. If I could sell to my neighbors without fear of the government, making a living for my family would be much easier. There is much more demand for goat cheese than there are providers, because the regulations are geared toward industrial dairying, which goats don't thrive under.
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, frugal living, animal rights, food safety, global food crisis and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources.
We are killing our planet in our quest for more oil. It is past time for us to break our addiction to oil. The simplest and most effective way to break our personal consumption of oil is to reduce our consumption of meat.
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights, global food crisis, food safety, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources.
Animal products are important because more than half of the world's crops are used to feed animals, not people.
Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70% of the global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use, and 14% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Agriculture and food consumption are identified as one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures, especially habitat change, climate change, water use and toxic emissions.