This week, we examined the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance’s Ash Wednesday and Lenten season campaign to reduce food waste. In this post we highlighted President of the Board of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Fred Kirschenmann’s recent TEDxManhattan talk where he discussed the importance of soil in our food production system. And in this post we highlighted the New York Times’ online debate, on the challenges and opportunities of the 2012 Farm Bill that the U.S. Congress is currently discussing.
Photo credit: Bernard Pollack
The World Food Prize is currently looking for nominations for its first annual Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application. Nominees must be under the age of 40 and be working to eradicate global hunger. If you know someone who should be nominated for this award, please click here for more details.
And click here to find out how you can join prominent food activists and leaders including Navdanya founder, Vandana Shiva; author of What to Eat, Marion Nestle; and co-founder of the Small Planet Fund, Anna Lappé—as they come together tomorrow for a global day of action to take back the food supply from corporations like Cargill and Monsanto.
Highlights from this past week:
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment , a quarter of the world’s known plant species—some 60,000 to 100,000 species—are threatened with extinction. And even though plants may not receive as much attention as endangered animals, they are essential. Among their many attributes, plants are a vital source of food, they can help stabilize the climate, and they also provide shelter, medicines, and fuel. In this post, Nourishing the Planet introduces five agricultural innovations, such as seed banks and permaculture, that are helping to preserve our natural biodiversity.
Our indigenous crop of the week is soursop or guanábana, a tropical fruit that is native to Central America, northern South America, and the Antilles, but that now grows wild and is cultivated in warm, tropical climates around the world. Soursop’s milky-white pulp is fibrous and punctuated with black, mildly toxic seeds. When you can get it fresh, the fruit is eaten raw with a spoon. Soursop also preserves well, so commercial farmers often squeeze it to make beverages, candies, custards, and jellies. Guanábana juice concentrate or carbonated soft drinks abound in Central and South American countries.
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.
