(large scale industrial livestock farm) The environmental impact of industrial livestock raising is huge. It is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gases behind energy production. Without changes in how we produce meat, the amount of greenhouse gas emitted through industrial livestock raising will only increase. The population is rising and becoming more affluent. More affluent populations tend to eat… Read more »
While researching the United States food waste system, I came across the United Nations list of countries that record how their food is processed, distributed, and where the waste goes. Many countries trash roughly 30-40% of the food that is produced or purchased. This immense cost of waste is probably the largest inefficiency in the global food system. We have… Read more »
Agriculture is generally recognized as the precursor to the world’s first civilizations. The development of irrigation and other farming methods boosted food production and allowed for population expansion and permanent human settlements. Irrigated land expanded at a steady pace until the last century with the advent of modern farming techniques. Modern farming tripled acreage of irrigated land between 1950 and… Read more »
The American food system has been restructured by trade liberalization, which threatens our food culture and our health. If we are to wait for the market forces to respond to customer purchase power, I fear we will miss our opportunity to change national diets for another generation. The best form of health care is preventative action, and that is what… Read more »
One of the most promising possible solutions to an increasingly at-risk world food system is the concept of urban farming. Already a popular initiative and social movement in many cities, urban farming brings people closer to their food and vice versa. We already have heard compelling arguments from Authors like Pollan, and seen undeniable evidence via ethnographic studies of non-Western… Read more »
“Aquaculture is a rapidly growing, highly valued and extremely important sector of the seafood industry. It is predicted that by 2030 it will account for more than 60% of global seafood production” (Dowle et al.). There are two basic forms of aquaculture, extensive systems and intensive systems. Extensive systems are powered by the sun, have a relatively low environmental… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »