Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

Friends of the Earth is celebrating Women’s History Month by recognizing the contributions and careers of several women on Friends of the Earth’s staff. We discussed their inspirations, interests, the importance of women in the environmental movement and each shared advice for the next generation looking to be a part of the movement.

Driven by concerns about food safety and illegal fishing, major seafood companies are working to improve how they trace fish through the industry’s complex supply chains. But in many parts of the world, fish are caught by artisanal fishers, not by massive trawlers. For these small-scale fishers, existing tracing technologies are often too cumbersome, complex, or expensive to use. This means they are often ineligible for sustainability certification (and the economic benefits that entails), because they can’t prove where, when, and how their fish were taken.

A regional collaboration of resource agencies learned today that it will receive an $8 million grant to protect agricultural lands and ecosystems for drought and climate resiliency.

Purdue University will play host to a three-day Ideas Lab this month [January 2016]. The goal of the event is to create interdisciplinary teams and research pre-proposals for new agricultural technologies in food security.

Beal’s project was funded at $200,000 and builds on his award-winning soft-shell clam research. “Using Applied Research to Support Development of Intertidal Aquaculture of Soft-Shell Clams” focuses on wild clam recruitment in the Harraseeket River system at Freeport. Read more

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Beal and a team based at the university’s Marine Science Field Station at the Downeast Institute are putting their aquaculture innovation skills to work. The team’s goals are to diversify the U.S. market for shellfish and increase the number of jobs in that market. The researchers are focused on two types of shellfish with the potential to bring more jobs and dollars to the area: blue mussels and Arctic surfclams.

The air in San Sebastián Tepalcatepec, a farming community in the south-central Mexican state of Puebla, is hot and dry and, frankly, reeks. Alexander Eaton rolls down the window of his pickup truck and inhales. “This smells like opportunity,” he tells Quartz with a grin.

On a drought-parched piece of land in California's Central Valley, farmer Don Cameron has persuaded other growers to do something counterintuitive. Flood their farms. "I think you could put millions of acre feet back into the ground," said Cameron, who grows everything from almonds and grapes to carrots and tomatoes.

Heather Coleman spoke at the the NASA Climate Policy Speaker Series on Oxfam's global work and COP21. Visit the NASA website