Congratulations to the New Zealand lamb-export industry for getting a gullible The New York Times to publish an op-ed recycling its claim that its product is better for the global environment than locally produced lamb. The argument, however, is more than a little bit wooly. The industry-sponsored study cited turns out to be dressing up an environmentally dreadful product in benign sheep’s clothing.

 

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded

 

The Jerusalem artichokes in my fields aren’t artichokes, and they’re not from Jerusalem. So what are they? For one thing, they’re a problem I need to solve soon.

Scientists call Jerusalem artichokes Helianthus tuberosa. Helios is Greek for sun, and anthus means flower, so the Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower that makes a tuber. A tuber is an enlarged, subterranean stem, not a root, with buds that can send out roots, other stems, or leaves. Botanists will tell you that plants evolve a tuberous habit to survive harsh environmental conditions. A tuber can remain alive under an insulating blanket of soil for a long time. When rain finally does come, underground tubers are stimulated to sprout stems and greenery, and the plant grows up into the sun.

      In the last ten years internationally, traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous management systems have caught the attention of many scientists globally. This is a good trend. We don’t know how long this post-deconstructionist window of cultural relativity is going to be open. We’re damn glad it’s open. We hope it stays open long enough to sneak through and get some of our ideas across about a fundamental difference between the Western scientific-oriented environmental movement, which has many good aspects, but which doesn’t fit exactly with indigenous cosmologies and world views. We need then to find out where we can work together.

 

Flordemayo is a Mayan healer living New Mexico who is a member of the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and is a director of The Institute for Natural and Traditional Knowledge, which among other activities, is developing a seed bank for heritage foods and medicinal seeds.

AM: How did you become a healer?

Flordemayo: It’s not so much that you become, but you are born. The way that I do the healing is I’m a seer first. I see. If somebody comes to me with a question I ask their permission. In asking for permission, I can look at the person’s light body. When doing that, I get information through a movement of color. There’s color all around the inside and outside of the body. That’s how I do my analysis. It all comes from experience; it’s not anything that anyone taught me.

We now eat food that is grown an average 2000 miles from where we get to eat it. Government has implemented laws and regulations to mitigate the risk of eating food imported from this distance. These laws however often make it impossible to eat food that travels one mile. What follows is a conversation between Food Chain Radio’s Michael Olson and Joel Salatin, the President of the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Joel is the author of Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.

Food Chain: Joel where is hog-heaven?

Joel: There is a sacred and moral dimension to what you and I patronize, beyond the manipulative ability of humans. These are habitats that allow the cow to express its “cow-ness,” or the “tomato-ness”of the tomato. In the industrial food system, we look at food as inanimate bunches of protoplasmic molecular structure that we can mash, reconstitute, genetically engineer and ingest; expecting the three trillion critters in our insides to step up to the plate. This industrial food system has been perfected for about 50 years and has run its course, like the feudal system did in Europe. When this happens the systems become inefficient.