Sustainable food jobs - college to the workplace

Whether you're bee-lining towards higher education or simply curious to probe the swell of college and graduate programs in sustainable agriculture and food, our friends at the Sustainable Food Jobs blog are compiling a very accurate college and graduate program list for potential students of people, food, and politics. Who else is excited about new cohorts of visionary, passionate, and aggressively interdisciplinary graduate students?

Get your dose of world beauty

Enjoy this fantastic photographic tour of our globe...

Interdisciplinary street food

Those of you who've tracked my blog(s) (past and current) know my passion for food. Food is the ultimate interdisciplinarian. Environment and society and economics and health find common ground when we eat. Thinking about the connection between farmers and food stamps and nature shouldn't be a challenge as we munch on fresh fruit. When I was fundraising at churches for my work with A Rocha, I frequently re-framed politicized issues such as climate change in terms of eating. We all need to eat, and most of us can recognize the natural source of nourishment that is the earth - regardless of politics, economics, or opinion.

This week, San Fransisco is hosting the first ever Street Food Conference . Attendees discuss urban public space, cultural differences of street food across the globe, and marketplaces. My favorite food blog, Epicurious (*cough...thus my blog's name) highlighted some quotes from this event that express the unique role food plays in our lives:

"40 percent of the consumer diet in the developing world is street food."

"The sun goes down, the market catches fire," on the night market in Marrakesh.

"The night market allows us to have families outside of our families," on the sociability of the night market in Marrakesh.

Happy eating.

Africa's green revolution - people-centric and old-fashioned

BBC News is running a series of opinion articles on environmental issues called the "Green Room." This article, by president of the Rainforest Alliance Tensie Whelan, argues for low-input, traditional agriculture methods in order to spread the green revolution throughout Africa.

Whelan agrees with Africa's Green Belt Movement Founder and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maathai that a environmental revolution is overdue in Africa. "But when it comes," argues Whelan, "it must be sustainable; socially, economically and environmentally."

She continues: "A green revolution created and developed at the expense of sustainable, clean water supplies, good forestry protection and good soil management will not only be a disaster for the people of Africa, it will be a disaster for its ecology as well. Yet so far, much of the debate has been on the technology of agricultural inputs such as the role of fertilizers and genetically modified (GM) seeds...The debate - dominated by the West - has become, like so many western debates on big environmental questions, fixed on the technological solutions that will magically create tomorrow's paradise.

"In doing so, it has largely ignored the role good farming and forestry practices can play in mitigating food scarcity, protecting scarce water supplies and soil productivity, addressing climate related issues and both preserving and enhancing biodiversity across the continent."

At the Rainforest Alliance, Whelan encourages "good land-use management and harvesting practices, or reintroducing native tree cover" to improve biodiversity and reduce environmental fragility. Whelan echoes the perspective of one of my vocational heroes, ECHO, an educational and networking organization for workers in tropical agriculture.

Whelan also argues for sustainable forestry management. Re-growing trees and forests provides a barrier to desertification as well as haven to struggling species. While Whelan doesn't delve into the human benefits of forest preservation, a real-life example comes to my mind - A Rocha Kenya's Arabuko-Sokoke Schools and Ecotourism Scheme.

View the entirety of Whelan's article at Calling for an 'old-fashioned' green revolution. Of particular interest is the discussion invited by BBC moderators in reaction to her article.

I'm excited that the president of an environmental organization is so sensitive to the needs of societies in biodiversity hotspots and so forward-thinking about agriculture. Using traditional, basic techniques of farming supports local people and conserves land in a sustainable and productive fashion. What do you think?

Bio-diverse-artistry

One day, a tree met a remarkable artist with a big imagination, Christoph Niemann. Perhaps more artists can weave nature into creative expressions?