Why indeed? A snail has no notion of roads, what they are made of or what they are used for or even that it is lousy habitat for a gastropod. So what, you might ask...
Feeding Everyone Well
Join passion-driven minds finding solutions to the global food, ecology & diet challenge
MarkThe four pillars of food security
If you are reading this post, there is a good chance that you are one of the luckiest humans ever to have lived. At least you are well fed.
Finding solutions to future food
Humans are good at errors. We love telling people that they are wrong even when our pot is as burnt as their kettle. Critiques are not enough to shape our future...
Meatless Monday?
It might make you feel good to go meatless on a Monday. But what about the billions of people who do not have the luxury of such a choice? Where do they get their nutrients?
ChrisIs coal sustainable?
When the Victorians discovered coal at the start of the industrial revolution, it changed the world. But was it a sustainable resource? Back then, they didn’t even think to ask the question.
Latest articles
Food
We eat and drink fossil fuels
Do you know what happens on farms to grow the vast quantities of food needed to feed everyone? No? Start with a massive use of energy.
Soil is not a factory worker
Soil is agriculture's equivalent of the factory worker replaced by machines; initially more efficient, works longer hours without tiring, and increases output. But is food an industrial process?
What happens when you try to train 100 Finnish farmers carbon management?
Farmers know what to do; they are smart folk. They adapt even when asked to think outside the box.
Some really scary shit about the food system
I want to alarm you. I know it is not the way to gain likes or shares, but it has to be done, so here it is… One-third of the people on earth today suffer from malnutrition.
Yield volatility can cripple a farm, just ask Joe
Farming is a tough gig. Uncertainty, volatility and so many factors that cannot be controlled makes you wonder why anyone would take it on. Thankfully many do, including our buddy Joe.
Ecology
Resilience and resistance are not the same when growing food
I get knocked down, but I get up again. So goes the song, and so too our food production systems. At least, we hope they do.
Agriculture emits greenhouse gases
Agricultural practices are the source of over a quarter of GHG emissions. How we grow our food and fibre is a significant source of atmospheric pollution—a challenging but necessary admission.
Comment | A possum problem
None of the integration of food, ecology and diet advocated here on sustainably FED is easy. There are many challenges in a more ecological way of feeding everyone well.
Overshoot, the precursor to collapse
Overshoot is when the consumption of resources exceeds the amount available, which should trigger the ecological principle of density-dependence to pull consumption back below the resource limit. We had better hope this...
Soil at the heart of six global challenges
Almost all of the food grown to feed everyone well requires soil. This universal truth has been with humans every step out of Africa and across the planet.
Diet
Change in calories
Average daily food consumption is above the 2,500 kilocalorie threshold to maintain human body weight in all regions of the world. A remarkable achievement.
Diversity of diet
Back before agriculture was invented, anthropologists suggest that modern humans, Homo sapiens, had a highly varied diet. Not perhaps as individuals who ate what they could get, but in the aggregate.
Food security—the most egalitarian and humanitarian concept around?
Everyone with sufficient, safe and nutritious food all the time is perhaps the most egalitarian definition in the diplomatic lexicon. We like it and here is why.
Animals eat plants and humans are animals
Animals eat plants, humans are animals, so humans eat plants. Indeed, we eat many different plants according to this simple logic. Some animals eat other animals. Humans are one of these animals.
Vegetarianism will save the planet? Maybe, maybe not.
If we all ate less meat or even ditched animal-based food altogether would such a radical diet shift save the planet? Assuming that she needs saving, not a given, then would vegetarianism be enough?
