Category Archives: Farming

Contemplating Climate Complexity

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The people that will suffer the most by climate change will have had the least to do with causing it… that is a truly disappointing and sad reality. It is difficult to think about how to place myself within that spectrum from cause to effect, responsibility and helplessness. I try to make ethically sound decisions and support initiatives to address global… Read more »

Alternatives to Structural Adjustment Programs

  Agriculture, value added (% of GDP). (n.d.). Retrieved August 19, 2017, from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.AGR.TOTL.ZS?end=2016&locations=KE&start=1960&view=chart For me the greatest insight from my research is how developing countries can fight back against SAP’s. My research focused on Kenya where the agriculture had been successful for two decades after independence. However, since Kenya was one of the first countries to agree to SAP’s… Read more »

A Life of Embracing Vegetation

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My research paper focused on finding a solution in mitigating the dependency on meat production in the global food production. The problem with animal agriculture is that it uses an enormous amount of our natural resources and creates a high level of greenhouse-gas emissions. Meat production uses a vast amount of water, crops and land. The animals being raised for food create a large amount of… Read more »

Save the Land, Save the Water, Save Everything!

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Political Ecology has different levels of definitions depending on the scope of a given perspective. One concept that I find interesting is how we separate the word nature from environment. Essentially nature has a larger scope than that of what is implied by the word environment. Regardless of what word and what scope we have in mind about our surroundings,… Read more »

Banana Industry Giants: Why Reward Them?

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Bananas are found in every grocery store as cheap, affordable produce, but the fruit represents more than just something we eat and enjoy. It is symbolic of the many economic, social, environmental and political problems where the cheap price-per-pound label on the banana comes at the cost of the lives of workers in the banana industry in order to keep… Read more »

Holy Hemp!

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The political ecology of today’s world food system is continuously being shaped by countless influential factors. The world food system is in an utter state of imbalance in terms of waste and environmental degradation. The foundation from which these issues arise can be traced back to governmental and social dimensions and or decisions that took place in the recent past…. Read more »

Dirty Words

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We all know and maybe even use some dirty words.Typically these expletives are used in reaction to pain or frustration, to emphasize a point. Then there is the crowd for which dirty words are such a natural part of the way they speak, they’re hardly aware the words have come out of their mouths. Odd as it may sound,t is… Read more »

Denial – Our Most Valuable Renewable Resource

Fossil fuels are everywhere, even in our food. As we learned in week 6, oil is used to power the heavy machinery used on industrialized farms, it is in the fertilizer in the form of petroleum, it is in the plastics that are used to neatly package our food, and it is used to power the planes, trains and automobiles… Read more »

The Pacific NorthWest a Haven from Climate Change?

  “North Cascades.” Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, USDA Forest Service. Looking back on the lesson 7 contemplative practice on climate complexity I was at first kind of glad to be living in the Pacific NorthWest. As we saw in one of the slides the pacific north west will have increased agriculture production because of climate change. However, I quickly realized… Read more »

The Cost of Cows

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To function effectively, landscape governance ought to consider the whole system, which would account for the ecological impact and food sustenance needs. There is much profit to be found in land. Cash crops offer huge profits that are motivating a change in land investment and moving large corporations into the field where small farmers once predominated. The farms then tend… Read more »