EcocentricOceans
One of the hottest points of debate on aquaculture is the effect that farmed fish might have on their wild cousins. Fish raised in a major aquaculture operation live in close, sometimes cramped conditions that are nothing like the open ocean. As a result, they can become victims of disease and parasites—just as for centuries human …
EcocentricFood
As I write this, Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years. The lack of rain—combined with civil unrest and political interference from the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab group—has produced catastrophic results. Yesterday Nancy Linborg, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told a …
EcocentricOceans
Hypoxia sounds like a treatment that pop stars would use to keep from aging, but it’s actually one of the most serious—if underreported and invisible—environmental threats in the world. Hypoxia occurs when coastal waters become overloaded with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus—often from sewage or fertilizer running off …
EcocentricWaste
It’s tough enough dealing with all the hectoring we get about eating less salt, using bigger forks, and making sure that this or that food group makes up only this or that percentage of our diet. All that, however, is only when it’s the nutritionists talking. Things get even harder when the environmentalists enter the picture, with …
EcocentricFood
If you ate a tomato this winter in the U.S. eat a tomato today in the U.S., chances are almost certain that it was grown down in Florida. (Ed: Corrected because I forgot it was July, despite the 99 F heat.) The Sunshine State may be better known for oranges, but it’s also the source for about one-third of the fresh tomatoes produced …
EcocentricRegulation
Over 950 pounds of beef contaminated with radioactive cesium above the legal limit has been distributed and eaten in at least eight prefectures across Japan, Tokyo city authorities have announced. The beef, which came from cows raised on a farm in Minamisoma in Fukushima prefecture, contained cesium at a level of 3,240 becquerels per …
EcocentricOceans
As I write in the cover story of TIME this week, we’re in the middle of a seafood transition. Once nearly all of our fish were caught wild—indeed, as Paul Greenberg has written, fish are the last wild food in a world where nearly everything else we eat comes from a farmer’s labor. But that’s changing—around half of the seafood …
EcocentricOceans
I have the cover story this week on the state of global seafood, examining the rapid growth in aquaculture—and looking at the challenges facing the fish farming industry as it begins to provide an ever larger proportion of our seafood. It’s a massive subject, as you can imagine, and I wasn’t able to go into depth on everything I …
EcocentricUncategorized
If the apple you had for lunch seems almost too perfect, you can thank the chemical industry. Conventional farmers use pesticides liberally in their orchards, in part to prevent blemishes that can hurt the value of their product. As a result, Americans have come to assume that apples should be as taut and unblemished as a …
EcocentricFood
I’ve been researching the global aquaculture industry—which included a trip to lovely Turner Falls, Massachusetts—for an upcoming magazine piece. I’ll have more on that later, but I wanted to point to the new national aquaculture policy—download a PDF here—that was released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric …
