Recently in Gardening for Sustainable Homes Category
Ms. Migiro pointed out that the world is faced with an “unprecedented” rise of food prices, plunging many developing countries into a crisis that threatens to thwart efforts to achieve the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Highlighting some of the effects of the crisis, Ms. Migiro noted that families that do not have enough to eat are being forced to make terrible choices, such as deciding between food or medicine, or choosing whether to send their children to school or to the fields where they might earn money to help the family.
“And it’s women who are hit the hardest,” she said. “The development emergency engulfing whole communities is taking its heaviest toll on women.”
The crisis offers an opportunity to re-invest in agriculture in Africa.
“Helping African farmers can have a decisive impact on women’s lives,”
Ms. Migiro said, noting that for the most part it is women – who make
up 80 per cent of Africa’s farmers – that are out there under the hot
sun, tending the fields and harvesting crops.
“But the same women hit hardest by the food crisis are ready to hit
back,” she added, stressing that with the right support, they can move
their communities from subsistence farming to commercial farming and
even industry. This is crucial not only for the continent but for the
world, which is just not producing as much food as it consumes.
“We need to do much more… to empower women. Women can drive the Green Revolution in Africa. They hold the key to breaking out of the food crisis; to educating the young; to peace, progress and prosperity,” the Deputy Secretary-General stated.
SOURCE: UN.org
Watch a video about Monarchs -- to understand how much we have to learn about nature's natural systems.
The majority of the world's population is now urban dwellers -- and they are becoming increasingly disconnected from their food sources and their cost in human and ecological terms. The Los Angeles Times brings the ongoing -- and growing problem -- of social justice and fresh, pristine food to our attention:
RICK NAHMIAS was at cooking school in an affluent ZIP Code of the Napa Valley, a mouth-watering abundance of fruit and vegetables arrayed for his instruction every day, when it occurred to him to wonder at the hidden source of this bounty. "It astounded me," he says, "that nobody there talked about where all this food was coming from."When we look at how hard farm work is, and the toll on our brothers and sisters who are toiling for our health and pleasure, a conscientious adult will be willing to buy LOCAL, buy ORGANIC, and WASTE LESS.
A screenwriter, photographer and then researcher for political columnist Arianna Huffington, Nahmias had gone to Napa with the thought of maybe getting into the restaurant business. But his curiosity sent him in another direction altogether: on a mission to document through photographs the lives of contemporary farmworkers in California.
The result of his six-month immersion in the fields, "The Migrant Project," is on exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance through April 25, one stop on a national tour.
The poverty and drudgery of the estimated 1.1 million California farmworkers (nine in 10 of whom are Latino) are not news, except that Nahmias' photographs provide fresh evidence that their long-lamented hardships and indignities remain much the same as they were when César Chávez began organizing in the Central Valley in the 1960s.
The biggest payoff for him, he says, was witnessing the reactions of farmworkers and their families standing in front of his framed photos, some of them crying, simply because "it was the first time, they told me, they had seen themselves represented with dignity. I didn't know what to do with that. It was a gift, humbling."
Libraries and public schools helped support his work. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, wrote an introduction for his book. The Museum of Tolerance booked his show. SOURCE: LA TIMES
Thinking through where the profits go ... and don't go -- is part of being conscientious.
The shorter the route from field to table, the more of those profits go to the farmers and farm hands who do the work.
The longer the journey, the more of the profits go into factory farms, chemicals for fertilizers and insecticides, research for shelf life rather than nutrition, transportation, supply chain markups and poverty wages to the farm community.
It's that simple. And your awareness and choices matter.
SEE PHOTOS at his website: themigrantproject.com/
