Honey bees are an essential part of agriculture and plant life in North America, being a major pollinator of everyday foods such as cranberries, blueberries, tomatoes, apples, and numerous other crops (Schuster). Without bees, we would be left without a key pollinator and without pollination, there would be no more plants, no more animals, and no more man (Latsch)…. Read more »
Water is essential to every living being and water can heal. This is the idea that I have embraced because of how it acts as a means of cleansing our bodies and providing us with clarity. The nature of water is that whether we consume it, swim in it or we bathe in it, we are filled with a sense… Read more »
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 »
In the West, where fresh water is taken for granted, we are beginning to see the possibility of our water reservoirs depleting. Some states in the USA are already noticing consequences of misusing freshwater, such as California, which hasn’t seen a regular rain for the last four consecutive years (Egan). Many California residents have taken measures to reduce their water… Read more »
Land and water are fundamental concepts that are deeply rooted in the understanding of the political ecology of the world food system. Essentially every industry is in some way or another based on land. Politically speaking land is the most desirable asset because of the minerals and potential opportunity to generate desirable goods and services. Coupled with humanity’s need for… Read more »
In a world that is ever increasingly subjected to the consequences of climate change, weather patterns have not just become a bigger part of public and private discourse, it is having real effects on our lives. One of the many manifestations of climate change is severe drought. This is evident across the globe from Southern California to the Middle East…. Read more »
In the world that we live in, many science books state that 71 percent of the world is covered with water. The problem here is why is there scarcity? The reality of our water content in the world is that only a small portion of it can be readily accessed by people, and this is the problem that we must… Read more »
Western institutes employ thousands of people, allocating financial and agricultural resources in attempts to contain the problem of hunger in developing nations, but these efforts aren’t enough. An obvious solution to hunger is… send hungry people food! But the cost of transportation, in dollars as well as environmental pollutants, creates more problems than it solves (Robbins). Instead of providing consistent aid… Read more »
The industrial revolution brought with it numerous benefits for the modern age. Perhaps most significant is the technology that has made it possible to feed 7 billion people worldwide. The improvements in industrialized farming equipment made farming more efficient, producing higher yields while expending less energy for the farmers. However, less energy spent by people, cattle and horses to operate… Read more »
The enormous ecological footprint of large scale food production, particularly as a direct result of petroleum energy inputs stands out as the biggest deterrent to a sustainable food system. In order to generate the highest yields, factory farms are intrinsically dependent on oil, from the equipment required to cultivate and harvest, to the necessity for soil amendments that promote the… Read more »