Nourishing the Planet

This week, we highlighted a recently released joint report by the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Water Management Institute that examined the importance of improving food security without severely depleting water resources. In this post we discussed Food & Water Watch’s campaign to stop Walmart from selling Monsanto’s new breed of genetically engineered sweet corn. And in this post, we highlighted the recent fair food agreement between Trader Joe’s and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers that supports fair pay and better working conditions for tomato growers in Florida.

Photo credit: Bernard Pollack

Our research received some exciting news coverage this past week. Our 12 recommendations to go green in 2012 were featured in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and New Jersey’s The Record.

Highlights from this past week:

Our innovation of the week is the SolarNexus, a solar power generation system that can be installed relatively easily and quickly. Typically, when these systems are installed in developing countries, high-grade wires are usually not used because they are too expensive or not available, and as a result less electricity is available for use. In order to overcome this problem, Solar Nexus International custom-designs a system for each client, and then ships out a container that includes all the wires and materials needed for a U.S. code-compliant system. Once the shipment is received, the provided instructions allow local electricians to install the system.

When most consumers think about making better food choices, they often reserve those changes for the home: smart choices at the grocery store, an occasional trip to the local farmers’ market, cutting back on meat, and substituting applesauce for butter in homemade recipes. But when diners walk through the doors of their favorite restaurants, these smart-eating policies tend to melt away into the indulgent abyss. But consumers can continue to use their purchasing power to support eco-friendly restaurants to support small-scale, organic, local farmers. In this post, Nourishing the Planet presents five innovative restaurants in the United States that are providing delicious meals in a sustainable manner.

And our indigenous vegetable of the week is the Pomme du Sahel, or Apple of the Sahel, a tree that is native to the western Sahel desert, throughout Niger and Burkina Faso. On the windswept and heavily degraded soils of the Sahel, it is one of the few hardy trees that can survive and produce fruit. That makes it a crucial part of initiatives underway across the region to use trees to help restore the health of soil damaged by overgrazing and the clearing of perennial vegetation.

Now it’s your turn: What were your favorite posts from the week? What do you hope we’ll write about next week? Let us know in the comments!

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.

This week, we highlighted Thistle Farms, the social entrepreneurial arm of Magdalene, a two-year private rehab facility for women with criminal histories, where they learn to make therapeutic goods, such as bath and body oils as a means of rehabilitation. In this guest post, Director of the Makerere University Agricultural Research Institute, Moses Tenywa discussed the multiple economic and nutritional benefits that the indigenous crop amaranth provides farmers in Uganda. And in this post, we examined five private corporations, such as Kraft and PepsiCo, which are helping to reduce hunger around the world through partnerships with nonprofit and government organizations.

Photo credit: Bernard Pollack

We were at the Georgia College and State University’s Global Citizenship Symposium this past week, where project director, Danielle Nierenberg discussed the connection between sustainable agriculture and better health. Please click here to read the University’s student newspaper, The Colonnade’s article on the event.

Highlights from this past week:

Valentine’s Day has long celebrated love with caring notes, decadent chocolates, and romantic arrangements of flowers. But this Valentine’s Day, we celebrate with the gift so many of the world’s women desperately want and need: reproductive health. According to the United Nations, 1,000 women die every day due to pregnancy or childbirth—or one woman every 90 seconds. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in the developing world, 90 percent in Africa and Asia. But the bulk of these deaths are preventable if women are given the care they need.

Genetic diversity, from microorganisms to large mammals, is being lost at a rapid rate—between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural rate, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. To combat this dangerous biodiversity loss, the U. S. Department of Agriculture is updating and expanding its genetic resource database software, known as the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN). In this post, Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group member, Dr. Cary Fowler, discussed how GRIN is changing the way the world views genetic diversity.

And our innovation of the week is the Pro-poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa (PRESA), a research project created by the World Agroforestry Centre to improve livelihoods by enhancing ecosystem services. PRESA works on eight sites in the highlands of East and West Africa and collaborates with national partners, research institutions, universities, and NGOs to generate and share information that supports payments for ecosystems. By rewarding environmental stewards, instead of punishing wrongdoers, PRESA uses market-based approaches to induce behavioral change among ecosystem stewards to reduce poverty and conserve the environment.

Now it’s your turn: What were your favorite posts from the week? What do you hope we’ll write about next week? Let us know in the comments!

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE. And to watch the one minute book trailer, click HERE.