Zachary Jones is a saddle-hardened fifth-generation rancher even though, on the surface, he may not look like one. As he threads his pickup truck through the back pasture of a quintessential Western expanse – one carpeted in flaxen-colored grass in the shadow of Montana’s Crazy Mountains – he bears little resemblance to the stereotype of [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet on July 30th, 2012 | No Comments »
AMSTERDAM — An unemployed man, a retired pharmacist and an upholsterer took their stations, behind tables covered in red gingham. Screwdrivers and sewing machines stood at the ready. Coffee, tea and cookies circulated. Hilij Held, a neighbor, wheeled in a zebra-striped suitcase and extracted a well-used iron. “It doesn’t work anymore,” she said. “No steam”… [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money, Technology on May 9th, 2012 | No Comments »
Organic agriculture produces smaller harvests than conventional methods, but the difference can be minimized by employing the right techniques, a study finds. Organic agriculture generally comes at a cost of smaller harvests compared with conventional agriculture, but that gap can be narrowed with careful selection of crop type, growing conditions and management techniques, according a [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet, Gardening, Health, Technology on April 26th, 2012 | No Comments »
A man in his mid-50s helped grow a huge forest on a sand bar in the middle of the mighty Brahmaputra in Assam’s Jorhat district, which has caught attention of the government, tourists and film-makers. The 30-year-long effort of Jadav Payeng, known among local people as ‘Mulai’, to grow the woods, stretching over an area [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Gardening on April 8th, 2012 | No Comments »
First, Google’s Street View mapped our neighborhoods. Then, the camera-adorned bike made its way to Antarctica. Now, the Street View team has mapped a section of the Amazon. The project stitches together more than 50,000 photos to give viewers a virtual tour of the Rio Negro region. It allows people to float up the Amazon, visit villages, and [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Technology on March 27th, 2012 | No Comments »
China recycles, big time (Image: View China Photo/Rex Features) Don’t throw out that broken toaster: it’s key to our prosperity. Redesigning the economy so that all waste is reused or recycled would be good for business, according to two new reports. For centuries the global economy has been linear. Companies extract resources from the environment, turn [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Technology on March 1st, 2012 | No Comments »
Seven sloping acres at the southwest edge of Jefferson Park is being transformed into an edible landscape and community park that will be known at the Beacon Food Forest, the largest of its kind in the nation. For the better part of a century, the land has languished in the hands of Seattle Public Utilities. [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet, Gardening on February 29th, 2012 | No Comments »
…With these “tiny houses,” Kittel says, you can cut your footprint down to 120 square feet, you cut your utility bill down to maybe $150 a year, you cut your taxes down, you cut your insurance down, your maintanence is nearly nothing. Kittel is also planning to build houses in “village” groupings. ”I believe in [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money, Technology on February 27th, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.nationofchange.org/farmers-go-wild-1328632147 …The words “wild” and “farming” may seem at odds. In the last century, with the development of petroleum-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, farms were increasingly modeled on industry. “Fencerow to fencerow,” mono-crop farming emphasized high production and minimized the importance of biodiversity. Farmers ripped out vegetation, cut down forests, shot predators, and filled in [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet, Gardening, Health on February 8th, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10942618?utm_source=Ode+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6596892879-daily-rss&utm_medium=email By Hugh SchofieldBBC News, Paris A private honey store is now de rigueur for some top hotels and restaurants Tourists are not the only ones swarming down the Champs-Elysees and through the Luxembourg gardens this summer. Thanks to a renewed interest in apiaries, Paris is fast becoming the urban bee-keeping capital of the [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet, Gardening, Technology on February 3rd, 2012 | No Comments »