Health
Chak Chok: a campaign against junk food
Transnational corporations have been spectacularly successful in their profit-driven quest to hook the world on junk food. The global sale of packaged foods swelled to US$2.8 trillion by 2020, and is estimated to balloon to $3.4 trillion by 2027. Soda (soft drink) sales have exploded globally, reaching $995 billion by 2002, and are predicted to…
Read MoreHow the FCC shields cellphone companies from safety concerns
The health complaints started rolling in within weeks of the activation of a new cellphone tower in August 2020 in Pittsfield, an old factory town in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains. Seventeen residents reported headaches, dizziness, insomnia or confusion. A few children had to sleep with “vomit buckets” by their beds. Like many people, Bobbie Orsi had…
Read MoreWhat if food were treated as a human right?
It can be difficult to imagine a world – or even a city – without hunger. It seems so endemic to the world we live in that it can appear intractable. But there are examples around the world of places that have reorganized themselves to eradicate food insecurity completely, whether it be within one community…
Read MoreThe Gospel of Progress
Ever since the archaic divergence of humanity from other hominids, our systems of tools and symbols have developed at an accelerating pace. We depend less and less on the physical capacities of our bodies. We operate more and more in the realm of information: data, words, numbers, and bits. Quite naturally then, we have conceived…
Read MoreThe food shortage solution in your backyard
A confluence of crises – lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war – have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do? Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance,…
Read MoreAppropriate Technology, Traditional Cultures and Degrowth
The industrial-capitalist-technological system is characterized by perpetual growth through excessive production, relentless marketing and public relations to expand markets and demand through consumerism.[1] In the process, novel ‘needs’ are manufactured and the boundaries and norms of comfort and convenience are continually reshaped.[2] In this system relatively few technologies are socially necessary, and their manufacture and…
Read More6 Reasons People of Color Should Grow Their Own Food
In November 2007, my husband and I decided to leave our jobs in biotech, sell our Southern California suburban house, and buy an organic farm. Although we knew what we wanted to do, we had no clue where we would do it. The only thing we knew for certain is that it would have to…
Read MoreThe changing nature of milk
When I was a child, my Dad and I had regular arguments about whose turn it was to have the “top of the milk” – that thick yellow head of cream on the daily pint that we both coveted for our breakfast cereal. More often than not, someone would go out to the doorstep only…
Read MoreHow to fix a food system that’s not designed to feed people
Earlier this year, Americans learned what it looks like when a food system reliant on industrial agriculture, near monopolies and exploited laborers breaks down. Just two months into the pandemic, the meat industry in the most powerful nation in the world was buckling. In March and April, COVID-19 swept through meatpacking plants, infecting thousands of…
Read MoreLockdown in Ladakh
I returned to my village in Ladakh when the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown in late-March. I ended up spending the whole lockdown period in the village assisting my family with various agricultural and pastoral tasks. This was the first time I had spent so much time in the village since my childhood. This…
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