Just as some people react badly to fingernails being scraped across a blackboard, the expression “save the planet” and all its variations get my hackles up. The planet is going to be chugging along well after the human species has disappeared. But…
Over at The Independent, Joan Smith has written an editorial piece about (very roughly speaking) fair pricing for farmers called “There’s no latte without a dairy farmer”. Before I even began reading the article, I had one of those a-ha moments, w…
During a debate in Brussels on 7 December 2011, John Beddington, the UK’s top scientist “urged EU policy makers to make a better use of science and technology through the regulatory process when taking decisions about sustainability”, according to…
UPDATE: Less than 24 hours after I drafted this, Scoop-it announced the move from beta to public release. * * * * * I hope I’ll be forgiven for how long it has taken me to write Part 2 of this article. I know, I know, everyone says they’re really …
The multitude of social networks and tools available today can be daunting. It feels like the world is fragmenting more and more. But there are tools that make it possible to connect these dots, to find people with shared interests and to zero in …
A report I ran across yesterday from Thomson Reuters on organic food made me think of the old expression “lies, damn lies and statistics”. The series of monthly polls asks Americans about healthcare and is reported by National Public Radio (NPR), …
Several articles crossed my desk today about the impact of women in agriculture and women in Africa, so I decided to do a post about women effecting positive change. We tend to think of such women as exceptional. I’d like to believe there is an ar…
One of the most important changes affecting agriculture today is the growing influence of systems thinking. 20th century innovations were highly successful in feeding a booming population, but were conceived in a linear, piecemeal fashion, which c…
These great words of wisdom from Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-hour Workweek, struck a chord with me. I’ve been doing issues management and stakeholder relations for over a decade, and I’ve noticed that organizations too often get distracted by wan…
CommunicAction 