Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

“(Fair trade) is more than a market,” said Christopher Bacon, an assistant professor of environmental politics and policy at Santa Clara University. “It’s a set of social relationships between those that grow the coffee and those that drink it.” Read the full piece

Michael S. Stevens is the Co-Founder and Principal of Pioneer Mountain Group, an environmental consulting firm based in Hailey, Idaho. PMG provides a range of management, conservation, scientific and natural resource production and marketing services to clients including non-profit organizations, investment firms, and private landowners. The firm’s current projects are in the western United States, Latin America and Canada.

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We'd probably like to think that clean, safe food goes hand in hand with pristine nature, with lots of wildlife and clean water. But in the part of California that grows a lot of the country's lettuce and spinach, these two goals have come into conflict. Environmental advocates say a single-minded focus on food safety has forced growers of salad greens to strip vegetation from around their fields, harming wildlife and polluting streams and rivers.

“I obviously can’t speak for all farmers, but competition and the downward pressure on food prices means that farmers have to go to great lengths to satisfy customers,” Mulvaney said. “If there’s anything not in alignment with sales, it will not be balanced. Selling food is number one.” Read the full story

While this year's early warm weather has made for something of a ramp windfall, it also suggests future problems, said Frank Lowenstein, a climate scientist with the Nature Conservancy and an avid harvester of wild ramps. Since they're hearty, drought- and cold-resistant, and spend most of their year in the ground, a dry year will not hurt them, Lowenstein explained. "That’s their historical strategy: Get some leaves up and get their sunshine now." But a permanent change to weather patterns could spell disaster.

Sara Mersha (2010) is the Director of Grantmaking and Advocacy for Grassroots International. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sara worked for 12 years as Lead Organizer and then Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a grassroots group serving low-income communities of color in Providence, RI. After serving as Visiting Faculty in the Ethnic Studies Department of Brown University, she began a master's degree at Brown's Center for Environmental Studies.

"For their corporate people to take this step is very encouraging," said hook fisherman Eric Hesse of West Barnstable. Hesse, who was among a group of five Cape Cod fishermen who sold their catch of cod to Whole Foods in the first quarter of last year, said fishermen and representatives of the chain will meet next week to look into a new agreement to buy locally landed fish. "We were able to establish a relationship with them," he said. "Now, we're in the planning stages again."