Our drinking water is in peril. Just imagine a reality of combustible well water, poisoned crops, sick and dying livestock and family members – perhaps even you – developing skin and breathing problems and lethal brain lesions, kidney and liver problems and nervous system illnesses from exposure to harmful hydrofracturing chemicals. Horrifically, this tableau is [...]
About Elizabeth Maginnis
Website: http://desertgirlmedia.com
Elizabeth Maginnis has written 20 articles so far, you can find them below.
Creating Solutions
Vandana Shiva and The Navdanya Farmers Network
Navdanya, a network of seed producers and organic farmers located in 16 states across India, has helped to establish community seed banks across the country and train farmers in seed and food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture (the word “Navdanya” refers to the nine crops that form India’s source of food security).
Creating Solutions
Food Deserts and Urban Farm Markets
Former NBA draft pick and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellow, Will Allen has devoted his life to improving access to healthy foods in these urban food deserts. Recognizing that a diet consisting mainly of convenience-store and fast-food fare leads to health issues such as diabetes and obesity, Allen developed the holistic farming model of food cultivation and efficient urban food distribution that led to establishing the non-profit organization Growing Power, Inc.
Environment
Sustainable Vegan Farming Practices Empower the World’s Hungry
It stands to reason that sustainable, crop-based agriculture offers the least expensive, yet most productive, method for feeding and empowering the poorest members of the world’s population. Smallholders empowered by self-sufficiency and the ability to generate income by selling their surplus crops can potentially lift themselves and their children out of a downward spiral of hunger and poverty.
Creating Solutions
How Does Mindful Farming Help Solve World Hunger?
It is important for us to keep in mind that most of the soy and corn grown in the United States goes toward livestock production and not to feed undernourished people in this country and abroad. Mindful, compassionate farming practices–farming to support a vegetarian lifestyle–would make more land available to grow grain for distribution to the world’s hungry. Soy and grain would no longer be diverted to livestock.
Creating Solutions
A Mindful Approach to Food Fosters Compassion for the World’s Hungry
Mindful eating brings us in touch with our food, both in terms of what and how much we eat. Respect for food reflects our gratitude to the sun and to the Earth for providing us with sustenance. Mindful eating also introduces another level of awareness to our lives: namely, compassion for those who do not share our bounty and a desire to do something about it. Mindful farming practices free up resources that can be used to produce more food for the world’s hungry.
Creating Solutions
Not in My Back Yard: The Lake Ontario Wind Farm Debate
The Great Lakes of North America hold vast potential for supplying surrounding regions, in both the United States and Canada, with enough wind power to energize hundreds of thousands of homes and reduce dependence on fossil fuel and oil-generated power. This valuable source of sustainable energy–said to be the most productive wind region in the [...]
Environment
Can We Defend Ourselves Against Particle Pollution?
Have you noticed during televised news reports on this summer’s heat wave that a haze hangs over the cities highlighted in the reports? It appears that there are not many areas of the country that are immune from that thick grey cloud. The American Lung Association of New York gave a failing grade to the air quality in Western New York in its State [...]
Environment
The Butterfly Beltway Project
Butterflies add delicate beauty to any garden, especially so the monarch with its brightly colored, stained glass window wings. Attracting these wonderful creatures to your garden simply involves offering butterflies a rotating array of colorful annual and perennial flowers that supply these delicate beauties with nectar all season long. Who doesn’t smile at the sight of butterflies dancing joyfully from [...]
Environment
Does the Future of Agriculture Lie with Agro-Homeopathy?
Agro-what? You may have heard of homeopathy, but how does it apply to crop production? Advocates of agro-homeopathy attest to the modality’s ability to influence the biological processes of plants to affect growth and control plagues and diseases. Could this be the future of agriculture?
Current Events, Politics & Economy
Who Is Rand Paul and Why Should We Care?
On Tuesday May 18, 2010, Kentucky Republicans chose Tea Party member Rand Paul as their candidate for the United States Senate. This deserves special note because of racially slanted comments recently made by the candidate. Dr. Paul backpedaled, perhaps at the suggestion of his advisors, but the effect is the same regardless. Rand Paul is either libertarian to an [...]
Creating Solutions
The Great Great Lakes Restoration Project
Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes of North America, attracts thousands of water enthusiasts to its shores each year. Generations of families-including mine-spent many a lazy summer day on its sandy shores with beach towel, pail and shovel in hand, enjoying the breezes and warm summer sunshine. Together, the Great Lakes contain 20 percent of the [...]
Creating Solutions
The Coffee Party Is Brewing Up Support for Financial Reform
Wall Street dominates the national news. Is there any limit to the avarice? Not much surprises us anymore. We cannot and should not allow ourselves to be jaded into accepting this level of corruption, now or in the future. What can we do about it? How can individual citizens support Congressional reform efforts and force Wall [...]
Creating Solutions
Converting Urban Blight Into Urban Farms
Urban blight is dismal, disheartening and depressing. Not to mention ripe for takeover by criminal elements. Buildings that once were proud centers of commerce devolve into soulless plots of overgrown grass, graffiti and broken glass. Rochester, New York has more than its share of urban blight within its borders, but that soon may change. A [...]
Creating Solutions
Can We Save the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
Imagine a collection of garbage swirling round and round and round in the middle of the Northern Pacific Ocean. Discarded plastic bags and bottles, old fishing nets and other forms of trash pitched over the sides of ships or thoughtlessly cast into the ocean from the shoreline, drift on currents to gather in a vast area between Hawaii and California which [...]
Food & Drink
Going Veggie Doesn’t Mean You’re Stuck with Tofu
I haven’t looked back since I decided to go veggie 18 years ago. For me, it’s a rejection of the unthinkably cruel factory farming and slaughterhouse mentality of the meat industry; I no longer wanted to contribute to the perpetuation of those practices. However, disavowing meat meant finding a suitable replacement for the protein I [...]
Creating Solutions
Are Personal Wind Turbines Feasible?
I love the idea of wind energy! Anything that lessens my dependence on the grid is fine by me. It’s not just that our lives depend upon the power that travels over the transmission lines that criss cross our country; it’s that our lives depend upon the power that travels over the, well, you know. [...]
Culture & History
Good Morning, America: The Coffee Party Is Brewing
The whole Tea Party thing bothers me, as does any angry mob that operates under half-formed assumptions with an undertone of racism. The old adage, “Empty barrels make the most noise,” certainly applies here. Do any of the Tea Partiers actually study the issues against which they rebel, or are they merely reacting to the half-thought-out comments of politicians who [...]
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