GM Crops Don’t Deliver What They Promise (REPORT & VIDEO)

You consistently hear about how GMOs can help save the world. You hear how they can help poor farmers. You hear that they are greener (more environmentally friendly). You hear that the world needs them….

But who do you hear all this from? (GMO companies and the politicians they buy.)

Nnimmo Bassey, head of Friends of the Earth International, *slams* these claims. He reports in the video below that GM crops are not good for small farmers at all. They are created for the large monoculture farms of agribusinesses (and chemical companies which, conveniently, also produce the GMOs). The require the use of tons of herbicides and pesticides, which is worse for the environment.

Meanwhile, promises of drought-resistant and salt-tolerant crops have not been fulfilled.

Help Fund DIY Global Village Construction Set

Help Fund DIY Global Village Construction Set

Back in May, I wrote about Open Source Ecology’s DIY Global Village Construction Set. It’s a wicked cool idea of a handful of DIYers, farmers, and engineers, led by Marcin Jakubowski, to help create:

“A world where every community has access to an open source Fab[rication] Lab which can produce all the things that one currently finds at a Walmart cost-effectively, quickly, on demand from local resources.”

EcoLocalizer Job Board!

FYI: we just added a green jobs board for you all! (It’s on the bottom-right side of all of our pages now.) The system is specifically tailored to you all.

If you’re looking for a job (or just curious), check it out and let us know if you have any feedback.

You can also create a customized subscription to the job board in a few ways:

Peanut Butter Prices Rising Due to Climate Change

Jeannie wrote about peanut butter becoming more scarce a couple months ago. As she noted at the time, incredible U.S. drought was the cause of this. These are just some of the effects of global warming that we have been warned about for decades, of course.

Now, with scarcity, prices rise. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that several major peanut butter brands are raising prices, considerably.

Pineapples! (Health Benefits)

I love pineapples. They are one of my favorite foods. We happened to buy one this week, and it was so good I thought I’d finally write a piece about the yellow jewel.

While I normally write about my favorites recipes when I write about a specific food, I really love pineapples in one way much more than any other — plain and simple. So, I don’t have any recipes to share that compare (in my opinion) to a freshly cut pineapple.

BUT, I think it’s always useful to write about the wonderful health benefits of a fruit or vegetable. So, here are some of the health benefits of pineapples for you:

Scotland — Home to World’s 1st Online Urban Green Space Map?

I recently read a headline saying that Scotland had made the “World’s First Urban Green Space Map.” Now, while that sounds pretty cool, I’m not sure if I caught what’s first about it. As you may or may not know, my master’s degree was in city planning — making urban green space maps is nothing new in the field. Even making online, interactive versions of the maps like this one is not at all unheard of. My only thought is that it might be the first national-scale map of its kind….