Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

Chris fondly remembers chopping wood and picking slugs off the lettuce in his family’s organic garden. He believes practicing his parents’ alternative lifestyle based initially on choice and then on necessity gave him a basic understanding of how to live sustainably, but he didn’t actually hear the term sustainability until he went to college at UC Santa Barbara to study Economics and Environmental Studies. Read the full story

Patrick Archie doesn’t allow pesticides on his plot at the farm and encourages holistic connections with the land. This small corner of campus might as well be a portrait of what most people imagine when they think “organic.” But it’s not—at least, not officially. Organic is more than an attitude or a concept, it’s a legal designation, the rules of which are rarely understood completely by consumers. As the summer season of fresh fruits and vegetables arrives, it’s worth taking a closer look at what the term “organic” really means.

Today the image of that Kona field system lives vividly in the imagination of Noa Kekuewa Lincoln. On a late afternoon at the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in South Kona, Lincoln is striding among the forty-four different cultivars of ko that he helped replant the year before. The planting was done in the traditional Kona drylands style, with kuaiwi on one side of the ko and rows of kalo on the other. Lincoln pauses beside a particularly vibrant clump of cane that has green-andwhite- striped leaves and stalks with stripes of pink, white and pale green. It’s called laukona, he says.

Today the image of that Kona field system lives vividly in the imagination of Noa Kekuewa Lincoln. On a late afternoon at the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in South Kona, Lincoln is striding among the forty-four different cultivars of ko that he helped replant the year before. The planting was done in the traditional Kona drylands style, with kuaiwi on one side of the ko and rows of kalo on the other. Lincoln pauses beside a particularly vibrant clump of cane that has green-andwhite- striped leaves and stalks with stripes of pink, white and pale green.

Every July and August these walks and programs are offered free to the public, covering an amazing variety of topics through the years – animal tracking, plant identification, edible and medicinal plants, forest ecology, amphibians, birds, mushrooms, trees, deer, moose, bear, beaver and more. New educational director Bridie McGreavy, following Harding’s retirement, is adding new programs. Read the full story

Below in quotations are the allegations, taken in verbatim from the report, which can be accessed in full here.

CALL FOR PAPERS2013 Food Law ColloquiumMaine Law Review The Maine Law Review invites you to participate in its 2013 Food Law Colloquium. The Colloquium presents an opportunity for discussion and debate about the legal architecture of food systems in Maine, the United States, and beyond. To complement the Colloquium, the spring volume of the Review will be devoted to high-quality legal scholarship focusing on a wide range of food law topics.

The USDA should start by requiring farmers who use biotechnology to abide by practices that prevent the spread of transgenic material, said Lisa Bunin, organic policy director for the Center for Food Safety. The group has opposed deregulation of transgenic crops like glyphosate-resistant alfalfa. "Why should the burden be entirely on organic producers?" she said. "The USDA needs to show its commitment to prevent contamination. The time has come for the government to step in."

“The department and its instructional garden are focused primarily on teaching sustainable landscaping and gardening options,” says Michael Gonella, chair of the Environmental Horticulture Department at the college. “This vegetable garden will be a key element in the garden and will demonstrate integration of sustainable principles including organic soil care, composting and use of organic compost, water efficiency and food production.” Read the full story