Category Archives: Week 9

Solutions for water and land resources that make sense for survival.

The two most vital resources that humans need for survival are water and land. Both resources are environmentally, politically, and ecologically significant as they support the food production system for human survival and sustainability. As the world population grows larger, there is a growing concern for providing food, for generating food into biofuels, and people wanting to move up the… Read more »

Seeds are People Too!

      No Comments on Seeds are People Too!

Regarding the seed and meat industry and our contemplative practice for module 9.  I thought a lot about how I feel about the choices I make when I eat and why I chose to make them.  Do I even care, or do I choose what to eat because I like it?  Thinking about this module and then doing the contemplative… Read more »

We are natural, we are engineered

      No Comments on We are natural, we are engineered

Seeds are both natural and engineered, just as we are. In fact, in the act of creating modified seeds, “a great deal of effort is required to separate undesirable from desirable traits.” (Wieczorek 2012) Seeds follow the same paths that we do, so I think it is inaccurate and perhaps unwise to elevate and revere processes that are considered “natural”… Read more »

Baby Seeds

      No Comments on Baby Seeds

In the Lesson 9 contemplative practice, I connected deeply with the analogy of human growth and see growth. Having a toddler, the experience of pregnancy, growing my own small seed, is still fresh in my mind. The similarities came up frequently during the course of this practice. Watching the Youtube video of the germinating seeds, I remember the obsessive tracking… Read more »

Meat and more Meat

      No Comments on Meat and more Meat

After reading this week’s learning resources, my perspective on meat consumption has changed significantly. My previous belief about meat consumption was that it was best to keep farming outdoors and “natural” rather than participate in the often-unethical farming of indoor livestock. I never realized that outdoor farming had as large of a negative environmental impact as Monbiot points out in… Read more »

Water, water, nowhere…

      No Comments on Water, water, nowhere…

What will happen- ecologically, politically, and economically- as our world’s water sources are depleted? Water is connected to agriculture through grain production; this means that water shortages around the world, due to climate change, desertification, and over-exhaustion of aquifers will produce food shortages as well. While groundwater continues to diminish through overuse and drilling into aquifers becomes more energy and… Read more »

A Seed of a Solution

      No Comments on A Seed of a Solution

I know plenty of people who I consider to be smart and reasonable who believe that any critique of genetic engineering of seeds is unfounded conspiratorial thinking. I have long found this notion unfair. I don’t think that genetic engineering is wrong on principle. However, I think it is too soon to know the effects on our health and the… Read more »

GMOs in a Global Context

      No Comments on GMOs in a Global Context

Much of the conversation over GMOs within the US natural food industry has focused on issues of labeling and the dangers that multinational corporations like Monsanto pose to organic farmers. For many, the 2008 documentary Food Inc. was their first exposure to the dark side of these high-tech advances, detailing how intellectual property lawsuits from agrochemical firms have put some… Read more »

Fertilizer Overuse In China

      No Comments on Fertilizer Overuse In China

China is the world’s largest agricultural producer and they are dependent on nitrogen based fertilizer. Reducing the use of fertilizer to minimize the ecological impact, while reducing costs to the farmer, and still producing the greatest yield, seems like common sense. Studies have shown that China uses 30 percent of the world’s fertilizer production, over half of what other countries… Read more »

What to eat?

      No Comments on What to eat?

I continually find myself in a personal struggle as to whether I should maintain a vegetarian lifestyle or consume meat. I switched to vegetarianism for many years after first learning about the practices that the industrial meat industry participates in.  Michael Carolan touches on many of these points, which ignites my internal debate about returning to a diet void of… Read more »