Touch the Soil News #1649 (Feature Photo – Cheese – CCA SA 4.0 International, Franck Schulenburg) Called the Great Cheese Emergency, small artisanal cheese companies who relied heavily on restaurants to sell their product have been sent into an economic tailspin. Called the Great Cheese Emergency, warehouses are piling up with artisanal cheeses that cannot…
Positive Future #764 (Feature photo – The World – NASA Public Domain) The New Yorker, one of the nations top weekly magazines, brings us a story by journalist Isacc Chotiner that is worth noting. While news of the covid 19 has dominated the public debate for several months now, is it possible that the covid…
Positive Future #763 (Feature photo – Closure and Delays at Shipping Ports Threaten Hundreds of Millions Of People – Public Domain) Covid Statistics, updated each day, reflect worldwide deaths of 346,000 so far. The Food Pandemic – made worse by economic disruption – has the potential to claim that many lives in just one day…
Positive Future #758 (Feature photo – Clean Air Buttons – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=167450) It is not secret that coal plants emit particle pollution that has been linked to respiratory health. Inhabitat news portal brings news of how Sweden and Austria just closed their last coal plants. Now three nations in Europe are coal-free – Belgium,…
Economic and Job Lockdowns Versus a Food Pandemic and a Global Recession Positive Future #757 (Feature photo – World Food Programme Seal – Public Domain) In a world of economic volatility, anything that increases that volatility will – as in decades past – unleash tremendous increases in risks to life. The World Food Programme –…
Positive Future #755 (Feature photo – Food Gardening in the Philippines – CCA 2.0 Generic, Sustainable Sanitation Alliance) One thing is becoming clear – food chain disruptions may be the antidote to a world that has succumbed to coronavirus fears. Few things represent a greater existential risk to food than dramatic economic curtailment. While the…
Touch the Soil News #1619 (Feature Photo – Trans-Ocean Container Ships – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic, Kees Torn) Phil Lempert ( https://www.supermarketguru.com/) brings us information on the food pipeline that has and continues to be disrupted by the virus lockdowns on the economy. The next mega-concern may eclipse the virus to be one…
Positive Future #743 (Feature photo – Cow With Calf – CCA SA 3.0, Uberprutser) Recently the heads of the World Health Organization, The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Trade Organization warned of the trade shutdowns and the existential risk to food security. In a reversal of fortunes, some dairy farms are now having…
Touch the Soil News #1605 (Feature Photo – Director Generals of WHO, FAO & WTO – By M. Jacobson – Gonzalez – ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland – https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/36433272494, CC BY 2.0, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic,By The White House from Washington, DC – President Trump at Davos, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86339937https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65393569 While shutting the…
Touch the Soil News #1584 (Feature photo – Map of Nations Facing Acute Food Insecurity – courtesy of the Food and Agriculture Organization) While the Coronavirus takes international headlines, the 4,100 flu deaths from coronavirus pale in comparison to some 450,000 other flu deaths that happen every year. More pressing are the acute food insecurity…
