Food & Agriculture

Bees are in trouble. In the U.S., they’ve been dying off at alarming rates since 2006 and beekeepers continue to report staggering annual losses.

This reports presents the results of monitoring for airborne pesticides conducted between June 2006 and August 2009 in central Minnesota. Overall, the results of the study indicate that for several months each summer, central Minnesota residents in potato-growing areas are regularly exposed to low to moderate lovels of the commonly used fungicide chlorothalonil in air.

Imagine an invisible cloud of a cancer-causing weedkiller drifting slowly across your state. Well, one just blew 100 miles across California, from Merced County, nestled at the northern tip of the Central Valley, as far south as Kern County (one county stop before Los Angeles) according to farm press.

Governments are gathering in Brazil, twenty years after the historic 1992 Earth Summit where nations around the world pledged to devote themselves to ending hunger and conserving the planet’s resources for future generations.

This week, governments gather once again, and food and agriculture are high on the agenda of “Rio+20.” Global leaders will be discussing which way forward to feed the world amidst growing food, climate and water crises. Monsanto & Co. have geared up with slick websites and sound bytes — to the point where some have dubbed the official meeting “Greenwash +20.” But the good news is that people around the world are mobilizing like never before for a new food system.

Agroecology provides a robust set of solutions to the environmental and economic pressures and crises facing American agriculture in the 21st century.