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"Beyond Food Miles Posted Mar 9, 2011 by Michael Bomford NOTE: The following article is concerned strictly with the energy equation of the food sytem and is intended to stimulate questions about how best to grow, transport, store and prepare (ideally local) foods. There are many reasons to favor local food, including supporting local economies and building local food security.      "There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact" -Sherlock Holmes   A locavore is "a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced food."[1] What better diet could there be for an energy constrained world? After all, feeding Americans accounts for about 15% of US energy use,[2] and the average food item travels more than 5,000 miles from farm to fork.[3] It seems obvious that eating locally will go a long way to reducing food system energy use.   Yet cracking the case of America's energy-intensive food system demands that we look beyond the obvious. A local diet can reduce energy use somewhat, but there are even more effective ways to tackle the problem. Single-minded pursuit of local food, without consideration of the bigger picture, can actually make things worse from an energy perspective.[4]   If you realize you're spending too much money, the first thing to do is figure out where it's going. Cutting back on pizza won't make much difference if you're spending most of your money on beer. Similarly, the first step in reducing food system energy use is to figure out where all the energy is going. That's what a team of economists working for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) did last year, in a report called Energy Use in the US Food System.     Where the energy goes: Energy used in the food system as a proportion of total energy used in the US in 2002.[5]     The report contains some surprises. Transportation is the smallest piece of the food system energy pie. Even farming isn't a particularly big contributor. The big energy users t

"Green with envy Published: 8 Apr 2013 at 00.00Newspaper section: Life I'm sure there are people out there who aren't aware that there is a 500-rai tract of lush green land sitting smack in the middle of the city. You might even drive past it, or around it, every day, but it has always eluded you. It's the big plot of land belonging to the State Railway of Thailand in Makkasan, bordered on one side by the Airport Link, and on the other by the Chaturatis Road that connects Si Ayutthaya Road with Rama IX Road. No one paid any attention to it until recently when the SRT announced it was considering developing the land into a commercial complex to boost its books, which always stand in the red. I do sympathise with them in a way, having to give away all those free train rides as part of the government's populist policies. As far as state enterprises go, the SRT incurs the highest losses _ over 7 billion baht a year, equivalent to 50% of its annual budget. But suddenly there looms the spectre of yet another commercial complex in Bangkok. The SRT governor was quoted as saying that he envisions a "new Bangkok landmark where people can use the facilities for important events to be seen around the world", citing the New Year's countdown and Songkran festivities among these. He also expects the complex to dwarf the nearby CentralWorld. According to the SRT governor, some 200 rai of the plot will be used for building new roads, and the remaining 300 rai or so will be for commercial development. He does say, however, that 15-20% of this _ approximately 60 rai _ will be landscaped as green areas. He makes it sound so generous I could cry. The way other cities calculate a per capita park area, it seems Bangkok thrives on a per capita shopping centre area. I'm sure we can be proud of the number of upmarket commercial complexes in the city. On the 4.5km stretch of road between Sukhumvit Soi 24 and Pathumwan intersection, I can already count almost 20 shopping centres ranging

"The place to be Local Alike is using tourism to boost the profiles of struggling communities 15 Jun 2016 at 04:00 1,021 viewed0 comments NEWSPAPER SECTION: LIFE | WRITER: KANIN SRIMANEEKULROJ Somsak Boonkam observing a forest hiking trail in Chiang Rai. Photos: Sayan Chuenudomsavad With their focus on introducing sustainable tourism practices to local rural communities in order to improve quality of life, local-tourism website Local Alike has recently been chosen to represent Thailand in Chivas' The Venture campaign, a competition among the world's social-enterprise start-ups, with the winner receiving a US$1 million prize. Now in its second year, The Venture's final round of judging will occur sometime next month. "We actually competed in the Thailand preliminaries last year, though we didn't make the cut," said Local Alike's founder and CEO Somsak Boonkam. "The judges last year were concerned about our ability to scale up, as we had only 18 partner communities offered. This year, we've grown to include over 50 member communities, all of whom were working very closely with to introduce and develop sustainable tourism in their communities. It goes together nicely with the campaign's slogan of 'Win the right way', as we are helping these local communities grow by their own strength instead of just giving them money." Unlike many other tourism-related businesses, Local Alike puts a significant emphasis on collaborating with locals in improving their community's quality of living. Furthermore, they also work closely with these communities to develop unique tourism experiences based on the community's cultural heritage. Once they're ready, Local Alike puts the community on their online platform, where tourists can go and enjoy the activities and facilities prepared and overseen by the locals themselves. Somsak Boonkam meeting with representatives from a partner community. To demonstrate his point, Somsak recalled his experiences working with the Baan Suan Pa com

Freer Trade Could Fill the World's Rice Bowl TWITTER LINKEDIN SIGN IN TO E-MAIL OR SAVE THIS PRINT REPRINTS SHARE By TYLER COWEN Published: April 27, 2008 RISING food prices mean hunger for millions and also political unrest, as has already been seen in Haiti, Egypt and Ivory Coast. Yes, more expensive energy and bad weather are partly at fault, but the real question is why adjustment hasn't been easier. A big problem is that the world doesn't have enough trade in foodstuffs. Enlarge This Image Alanah Torralba/European Pressphoto Agency Filipino port workers unload sacks of rice imported from Vietnam to be distributed by the National Food Authority. Related Times Topics: Rice Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web Managing Globalization: Can rice Farming Be Laissez-Faire? The damage that trade restrictions cause is probably most evident in the case of rice. Although rice is the major foodstuff for about half of the world, it is highly protected and regulated. Only about 5 to 7 percent of the world's rice production is traded across borders; that's unusually low for an agricultural commodity. So when the price goes up - indeed, many varieties of rice have roughly doubled in price since 2007 - this highly segmented market means that the trade in rice doesn't flow to the places of highest demand. Poor rice yields are not the major problem. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global rice production increased by 1 percent last year and says that it is expected to increase 1.8 percent this year. That's not impressive, but it shouldn't cause starvation. The more telling figure is that over the next year, international trade in rice is expected to decline more than 3 percent, when it should be expanding. The decline is attributable mainly to recent restrictions on rice exports in rice-producing countries like India, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Egypt. At first glance, this seems understandable, bec

"For sustainability-workers and UN-watchers, today was a big day. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered his long-awaited report to the General Assembly, with his take on the future of sustainable development. The big surprise? The fact that it's all in there … from tackling climate change, to moving beyond GDP, to ensuring human rights and dignity for all, to … well, everything. Sustainability, according to the SG, should basically be everywhere. "Simply put," he writes, "this generation is charged with a duty to transform our societies.""

""'Hip-hop and rap cannot be viewed simply as an expression of African-American culture; it has become a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local identity all over the world'" (Pennycook 102)."

"ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE is a documentary that focuses on the lives and dreams of the children of Good Morning School in the district of Mae Sot, Thailand. Mae Sot is one of the many towns along the Thai-Burma border where hundreds of thousands of Burmese nationals have chosen to live as a result of the repressive actions taken by Burma's military junta. "

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"Alpine and Nordic skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing - even ice fishing - could all be in trouble unless winter sports industry leaders take a leadership role in curbing emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, members of the National Resources Defense Council and Protect Our Winters insist."