Green Options

There’s an organic garden on Barack Obama’s lawn. The First Family eats local, organic, and seasonal food.

So why did the President’s scientific advisory team for last fall’s election include Sharon Long, a former member of Monsanto’s board of directors?

And why did Obama recently appoint Barbara Schaal, a plant geneticist with connections to Monsanto, to his Science and Technology Advisory Council?

The chemical giant Bayer — the same Bayer which brought you aspirin, heroin and mustard gas, and currently manufactures a wide variety of pesticides, herbicides, polyurethanes and other questionable chemicals — has wrapped their toxic fingers around our rice.

This is nothing new. The company’s glufosinate-resistant LL62 genetically modified rice isn’t commercially grown, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t already entered the global food supply.

Slash-and-burn agriculture may be bad for the environment, but in southeast Asia, the cure may be worse than the disease. Endorsed by multiple governments, at both the local and national levels, as well as numerous business interests, everyone from individual farmers to massive corporations has been replacing the traditional slash-and-burn, more technically known as swidden, method of farming with rubber plantations managed with European techniques. In the last 20 years, over 1.2 million acres of land in China, Thailand, Vietnam, [...]

Over the course of a lifetime, the average American consumes over 87,000 slices of bread.  Yes, you read that correctly — eighty seven thousand. That’s more than a loaf per week per person, not counting the additional 5,000 hot dog buns and 12,000 hamburger buns each American devours in his or her life.

All that wheat calculates out to a lifetime grand total of 21,947 loaves and buns.  The National Geographic Society’s Human Footprint project has illustrated this shocking bread obsession in a stunning visual (see the video clip below).   In the words of my little brother, who is no stranger to wheatless ways,  “That is a totally nasty amount of bread.”

There’s no argument that bread is an American staple.  Amber waves of grain are, after all, an American icon.  But we can’t live by bread alone.  So what are some wheatless alternatives?

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with dill.  If you grew up on Scandinavian-inspired dishes, as I did, you no doubt have a fond appreciation for its distinctive flavors — I loved to feel dill’s feathery-soft leaves against my hand when exploring in my mom’s garden as a girl.  On the other hand, if your only association with dill is soggy, sickly-green supermarket pickles, then you might not be quite so keen on the herb.

Often overlooked, dill — from the Norse dilla, meaning, “to soothe” — possesses surprising characteristics.  Among its little-known superpowers are antibacterial and calming properties; the annual herb can be made into a stomach-soothing tea. Dill has been popular since Biblical times, and is even mentioned as a valuable commodity in the Gospels: “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.”

Traditionally used in food to season fish or as a balance to yogurt’s tanginess, dill can also be used to brighten this protein-rich, vegan-friendly, summery rice salad.

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution from one our content partners, Divine Caroline.

By Allison Fishman of MainStreet for DivineCaroline.com

One of my favorite dinners as a kid was “leftover night,” when my parents would resurrect the greatest hits from the previous week.

Only now do I realize they were not only serving me delicious encores, they were also saving money on grocery bills.

By high school I was a leftover epicure. I knew which leftover dishes were better cold (lo mein and pizza), which improved when microwaved (stews and chili’s), and how to morph certain leftovers into a totally different dish, even better than the first.

Here are six of my favorite recyclable meals:

Want to sell your rice for a cost higher than the government thinks you should? Or slow production to a pace lower than the government’s ideal? Try that in Venezuela, and you’ll have Hugo Chavez’ troops at your company’s doorstep.

On Saturday, Venezuela’s dictator gave orders to the military to “take control” of all rice-processing mills in the country, including some US-owned plants such as the Minnesota-based Cargill.  Chavez has been enforcing price caps on food commodities since 2003, and is angered by the rice companies’ recent decisions to reduce production rates in order to catch up on lost profits.

Vietnam faces a stark choice. Its farmlands are shrinking as government policy to achieve ‘industrialised nation’ status by 2020 continues. But national food security has always been a focus of Vietnamese political and cultural life. How is it to balance these two competing aims. One answer is through the use of atomic energy.

A team of researchers at Rice University have discovered a way to improve the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries: use carbon-nanotube/metal-oxide arrays as electrode material. Rice’s nanotubes are grown to look and act like coaxial conducting lines used in cables.

In a first for the CD industry, Victor Creative Media Co Ltd. has begun taking orders for CD/DVD cases made with rice-based plastic. While rice accounts for less than 10% of the material, the composite plastic uses significantly less fossil fuel than traditional plastic. Victor’s product has previously been used in paper fan handles and benches.

When the World Food Program (WFP) introduced free breakfasts to public schools in impoverished communities around the world, teachers immediately noticed a difference in their classrooms. Not only were students more alert and focused, they attended more regularly and were never late so as not to miss breakfast time. The quality of the students changed, but so did the quantity. The percentage of female students - most likely to be forced to stay behind to help earn income - sky-rocketed and the age of attendance fell. Four year olds began to attend school with their older siblings, sitting obediently in classes just for a free bowl of rice in the morning. In many impoverished families, children are forced to earn their keep in place of going to school. In addition to eradicating hunger, WFP made school attendance a central part of their goal for the breakfast program.

The WFP school feeding program has become a touchstone aspect of both the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 action pact of 2002. Between the program’s inception in 1999 and its last data recorded in 2005, the number of children served has grown by 82%, which amounts to 21.7 million schoolchildren in 74 countries.

Now, despite its success and widespread acclaim, the International Herald is reporting that the WFP program will not continue in Cambodia - the first of many predicted shut-downs as rising food costs threaten the profoundly poor.