ALTHOUGH formal advertisements might be spreading the impression that fast foods are taking over African food systems, social media channels are showing how future-oriented African food scientists and indigenous food formulators are quietly using agroecology ingredients to alter the global food landscape.
Ñu’u Ndito (living Earth in Mixteco) is a group of 25 farmers from six municipios in the Costa Chica cultivating and conserving native colored cotton along with native corn and other food crops. The work began in 2011 with the dual purpose of re-learning sustainable farming practices and rescuing native cotton for use by artisans who identify with the colored fiber.
A recent article published in Nature Medicine highlights the ubiquitous presence of synthetic chemicals in the global food supply and emphasizes the need to transition to a safer, more sustainable food system.
Kids can’t help but explore when they’re in natural areas. They climb on fallen logs, leap over tiny streams, and wander through tall grasses. Their imaginations are as activated as their senses. These kinds of experiences open new worlds to them. In Sharing Nature with Children, Joseph Cornell writes, ‘It is very helpful—almost essential—for people at first to have startling, captivating experiences in nature. This kind of first contact extinguishes for a moment the self-enclosing preoccupations and worries that keep us from feeling our identity with other expressions of life. From that release into expanded awareness and concern, love naturally follows. And memories of moments of love and expansion act as reminders of, and incentives to, a more sensitive way of living.’
A study in Birth Defects Research bolsters existing evidence that agricultural workers, and specifically Hispanic workers in California, are disproportionately bearing the burden of pesticide exposure. Caroline Cox, formerly of the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, and Jonathan K. London, PhD of the University of California, Davis, examine how currently-used agricultural pesticides unequally affect communities along racial and ethnic gradients. Ms. Cox is a member of Beyond Pesticides’ board.
Walaita first learned high tree climbing for seed collection more than 25 years ago at a course organized by the Danish nonprofit DANIDA Forest Seed Center and has been honing his skills ever since. Over the years, he has trained a cadre of Ugandan botanists at Tooro, who can now safely collect seeds from even the most difficult trees, he says, improving their ability to propagate native species.
In response to federal immigration enforcement targeting farmworkers and their communities around the country, the United Farm Workers union (UFW) organized a demonstration in New York today, challenging Trump administration immigration policies and calling for the release and a halt to the deportation of farmworkers already detained.