Environment
Agriculture
Environmental stewardship has become as much a watchword in the business sector as it has among activists and advocates. When corporate executives start talking about the importance of ecosystems, regenerative agriculture, and responsible product sourcing, and NGOs promote innovative financing mechanisms that forgive national debt in exchange for funding conservation activ...
Protecting wild spaces helps to conserve the species that call them home — and is one of the best strategies for meeting global climate goals. National parks and other protected areas can cultivate a healthy relationship between humans and the land they depend on. How much more land — and ocean — do we need to preserve in order to maintain ecological and social wellness? W...
Food — delicious, nutritious, and plentiful — is essential to life. But the way we’re producing and consuming it is anything but friendly to life on the planet, and we need a new plan. In this pair of conversations, celebrity chef Daniel Humm shares his vision for transitioning the famed Eleven Madison Park to a vegan restaurant, and two innovators present new technology t...
Anyone who has ever had a pet understands how deeply connected human beings are to the animals who serve as our companions, lessen our stress, and perhaps offer a buffer against cognitive decline. Puppy play date, anyone? Honeybees help to protect our food supply, vision-impaired people rely not only on seeing-eye dogs but also on seeing-eye horses, and animal research has...
For more than 130 years, the National Geographic Society has pushed the boundaries of science by engaging the average citizen in a deeper understanding of the planet. Join two Nat Geo Fellows, Joel Sartore, renowned animal photographer, and Scott Loarie, director of a plant and animal identification app, to learn about the tools and strategies they're using to connect peop...
Congress’s approval ratings are in the gutter, local candidates routinely campaign against Washington, and voter turnout for national elections rarely tops 60 percent. Politicians can be counted on to campaign against all things Washington and claim outsider status whenever possible. Yet our national media outlets cover the ups and downs of DC on a nonstop, 24-hour cycle....
Federal funds could not be used to pay for sugar-sweetened beverages under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called food stamps), if recommendations from the Bipartisan Policy Center are adopted. In its 2018 report, Leading with Nutrition, the center calls for restrictions and incentives that would recast SNAP as a tool for healthy eating. Other...
Population growth, shifting agricultural practices, and altered weather patterns are weighing on the food supply, a pressure that will only intensify over the next 30 years, when the planet holds an estimated 10 billion inhabitants. Rising temperatures will reduce crop yield and spawn more pests, higher carbon dioxide levels will lessen the nutritional value of food, and f...
Many of the people doing today’s most consequential environmental work — restoring America’s grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans — would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land — they feel a moral responsibility to preserve their heritage and ens...
Social entrepreneurs Anne Kelly of Ceres and Rebecca Onie of Health Leads discuss how they’ve made unlikely allies in unlikely places, despite working on hot-button issues in a difficult political climate. By meeting people, practitioners, policymakers, and leaders where they are, Ceres and Health Leads have made considerable progress on two of the most urgent and universa...
We often take biology for granted, rarely recognizing the incredible technological feats of an organism as it grows, heals, and self-assembles—sustainably. As our ability to read, write, and design DNA grows, this power of biology is enabling amazing new biotechnologies to impact numerous industries, from everyday products brewed by designed microbes to programmable materi...
Urban farming utopias have been envisioned for decades—feed our urban dwellers by growing food vertically close to the people who eat it, a solution that can reduce transportation costs, save energy, and save water. Using a sensor-controlled hydroponic and aeroponic agricultural system, the Open Agriculture team at MIT’s Media Lab think they have the methodology to create...
Sustainability is the green buzzword of the decade, especially in the context of feeding a growing population while preserving the environment for the next generations. Unfortunately, the debate over how to address the global food challenge has set conventional agriculture and global commerce against local food systems and organic farms. This panel will explore what it mea...
Genetically modified organism. Rarely have three words generated such passionate and polarized debate. GMO has become a cultural construct, a metaphor we use to argue about a set of ideas that don’t fit neatly into any clear category: consumer and worker health; corporate greed; biodiversity; the role of the Green Revolution; productive farming in the developing world; inn...
Meat production requires far more water, grain, land, and fossil fuel than anything else we eat – for example, one pound of beef requires 1,800 gallons of water. Given the upheavals of climate change and population growth, relying on livestock to feed a hungry planet is not viable. Fortunately, innovators are creating plant-based foods that mimic the taste and texture of m...
Drawing on the gifts of the Amazon, leading Latin American chefs are putting a unique and remarkable cuisine on the world stage. Their menus fuse tradition and a commitment to conservation with culinary imagination and a passion for flavorful food. As they celebrate the lush variety of plants, animals, and fish in the rainforest, they are also working to improve the liveli...
The way we produce food is getting a lot of attention these days, and for good reason. If current projections hold, we’ll have 9 billion mouths to feed by 2050 – 2 billion more than we have today. Our need to eat already poses serious risks to the natural systems that sustain us. Can we meet future needs without further degrading our environment?
Two US Department of Agriculture Secretaries, one past, one present, come together to talk about American food policies. Agricultural supports and other decisions made on US soil, and the trade agreements we negotiate around the world, have powerful effects on the global food supply; land conservation; the use of water, nitrogen, and pesticides; and animal and plant diseas...