Farming the World: China’s Epic Race to Avoid a Food Crisis

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-feeding-china/
By Bloomberg News May 22, 2017

China’s 1.4 billion people are building up an appetite that is changing the way the world grows and sells food. The Chinese diet is becoming more like that of the average American, forcing companies to scour the planet for everything from bacon to bananas.

But China’s efforts to buy or lease agricultural land in developing nations show that building farms and ranches abroad won’t be enough. Ballooning populations in Asia, Africa and South America will add another 2 billion people within a generation and they too will need more food.

…(read more).

Malthus, population growth and the resource base

Jan Oosthoek

Published on Apr 1, 2014

This short video explores the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and his predictions for the growth of the human population. The video investigates the background of Malthus’ ideas, the mathematical basis of it and how it influenced the debate about population growth in the latter half of 20th century. The video concludes with a brief discussion if Malthus’ predictions have come true or not in the light of the high food prices in the first decade of the 21st century.

What was the message of Limits to Growth?

Club of Rome

Published on Jun 6, 2012

“Limits to Growth” is a study about the future of our planet. On behalf of the Club of Rome, Donnella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and their team worked on systems analysis at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT. They created a computing model which took into account the relations between various global developments and produced computer simulations for alternative scenarios. Part of the modelling were different amounts of possibly available resources, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control or environmental protection.

Saving Seeds at Home with Vandana Shiva

The Growing Club

Published on Sep 7, 2015

We are very happy to release this video in cooperation with Dr. Vandana Shiva and the Navdanya Organization. Seed saving is one of the important skills that has been lost of the last century, and Dr. Shiva’s work to preserve heirloom seed varieties, encourage organic farming, and create food sovereignty is some of the most important work of our time.

We hope you enjoy this video and will start saving seeds at home yourself.

This video was produced by members of The Growing Club. The Growing Club is a non-profit community group dedicated to helping people grow food at home and develop urban farms. Support our work and become part of the club at http://thegrowingclub.com

Dr. Vandana Shiva: “Why We Need an Organic Future” (NOFA-VT 2017 Keynote Address)

TheNOFAVT

Published on Feb 27, 2017

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate. In 1993 she was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, and in 2010 Forbes Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as one of the Seven Most Powerful Women on the Globe.

During her keynote address at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont’s 35th annual winter conference at the University of Vermont, she challenges the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, industrial agriculture and explains why we need an “organic” future.

Recorded February 19, 2017.

Will Bonsall at the Common Ground Country Fair 2015

MaineOrganicFarmers

Published on Dec 10, 2015

On September 27, 2015, Will Bonsall speaks at the signature event of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association — the Common Ground Country Fair. Bonsall is a farmer, author, founder and director of the Scatterseed Project, and co-founder of the Grassroots Seed Network. He takes a deeper look at the meanings of “organic” and “sustainable.” MOFGA’s Publications Editor Jean English introduces Will.

Biodiversity Matters From SEED: The Untold Story | ILDP | Independent Lens | PBS

IndependentLens

Published on Apr 7, 2017

Biodiversity Matters
From “SEED: The Untold Story”
On his farm in Maine, Will Bonsall is devoted to preserving seed diversity. He feels like a 21st Century Noah in a race against time as vegetable varieties continue to decline. For more information about seed banks and seed preservationists, visit Independent Lens on PBS website for the full film: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/fi…

Learn more about “Independent Lens”:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens

Independent Lens | SEED: The Untold Story | Botanical Explorer Joe | PBS

IndependentLens

Published on Mar 14, 2017

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens film SEED: The Untold Story, we meet seed-obsessed botanical explorer Joseph Simcox, who has loved learning about plants and seeds since a very young age. With his brother Patrick, he shows us rare and precious seeds they’ve collected from all over. He feels he has an obligation to the world, “whether that’s unbalanced or not, to bring this appreciation to as big a swath of humanity as possible.”

Trump’s Food Aid Cuts Threaten ‘Suffering & Hunger’ Across U.S.

TheRealNews

Published on May 24, 2017

President Donald Trump’s new budget proposal targets food assistance across the United States and critical programs for public health, says Mike Lavender of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food & Environment program

Scientists just published a study calling out the head of the EPA by name

No, warming is not ‘leveling off.’

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks to a group of miners during a visit to Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pa., Thursday, April 13, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

A new study appeared in the journal Nature on Wednesday, directly refuting the idea that satellite data has shown global warming has leveled off, a claim made by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt earlier this year.

“Satellite temperature measurements do not support the recent claim of a “leveling off of warming” over the past two decades,” the study says.

The researchers were upfront about why they ran the study, calling out Pruitt by name. “Mr. Pruitt claimed that ‘over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.’ We test this claim here,” the researchers write. The study was authored by Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and three Livermore colleagues, as well as three scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington in Seattle, and Remote Sensing Systems, a scientific research company.

…(read more).