Blog for People, Food and Nature

In 1983, our team (from the University of Hawaii, North Carolina State and the Indonesian Center for Soils Research) began a multi-year program in Sitiung, West Sumatra. We began our work using a Farming Systems approach, living in a village and working collaboratively with local farmers. The Indonesian policy at the t…

In 1991, the Secretary of Culture in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia officially designated an eighty-kilometer strip of its Atlantic shores as the Costa do Dendê, or Palm Oil Coast, in a formal nod to the dense stands of African oil palms that had come to dominate local landscapes. Part of a broader initiati…

To meet the growing sustainability challenges of the 21st Century, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service is reminding people that many of the solutions are right at our feet — in the soil. Here are the top five reasons NRCS says why on Earth Day, you should “root” for soil health farmers: A lot o…

It is often claimed that we need to increase global food production by 70-100% in order to feed the world in 2050. The assumption that food production is tied to food security dismisses the role of access and consumption to food. This is partly because food security is only weakly linked to the capacity of the world as…

This week, I had the pleasure to represent EcoAgriculture Partners (and livetweet) the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2015: Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability. The event focused on the underreported consequences of an unsustainable global system. Along with presenting the most pressing proble…

One would wish to have a direct and simple answer to this big question: Yes we can!  But unfortunately there are no free lunches, and whatever strategy we will adopt to satisfy global food demand, food production will inevitably have adverse impacts on our environment. Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on…