Faced with the international “technical” conference of the FAO in Guadalajara, “Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries,” which is little more than just the promotion of GM crops – today we inaugurated the “First public hearing to prepare the presentation of the GM Maize case before international courts,” organized by La Via Campesina North America Region, Red en Defensa del Maíz (Network in Defense of Maize, Mexico), and Asamblea Nacional de Afectados Ambientales (Assembly of People Displaced by Environmental Impacts, Mexico), with the participation of 276 people, mostly members and leaders of peasant, family farm , and indigenous peoples’ organizations from 19 Mexican states, the USA, and Canada.

“Picture this: a tree full of a dozen chickens and roosters in branches laden with oranges against a brilliant star lit sky. This tree stood in the barnyard of a farm where a group of five women from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Equal Exchange delegation spent two nights this past January. It was one of our first sights at Luis and Elsa Castillo’s farm in Boaco, Nicaragua; and for me it’s an image that captures the beauty and tranquility that we found there.” Read Susan Sklar’s reflections from this trip to Nicaragua that Melanie Hardison, of PHP’s Enough for Everyone, helped lead.

An Agrarian Road Trip to the U.S. Social Forum June 13–26, 2010 Experience the good food revolution on this road trip from the vibrant small farms of Kentucky to the bustling Eastern Market of Detroit. Visit church and community initiatives…

The recession has hit the poorest people in our community the hardest. More and more families are resorting to selling their food stamps to pay rent and buy basic necessities. Listen to the story of Eva, a mother of two,…

Despite the reference to eggs, this has nothing to do with food. No eggs, but yes, hot. Some fellow human beings have achieved and measured a quark-gluon plasma at 4-trillion degrees Celsius. In case you can’t fathom that, imagine 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun. Protons and elections would simply melt. If that isn’t wild enough to fry your brain, what gets me is the speeds they get these gold nuclei circling around their handy Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. They collide these invisible-to-the-eye gold specks after accelerating their speed to 99.995 percent the speed of light. You can do the math, right. One lap of this underground track is 2.4 miles. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, I think. So in one second, this gold speck goes around that track 77,500 times. In ONE SECOND. If we can do stuff like that, we should be able to figure out how to end hunger. Do you think we can?

One year ago yesterday, president Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “It included a mixture of tax cuts for businesses and families, infrastructure building and green investments, aids for states and localities, and help…

It is February 16th ten years after the turn in millenniums. I live in Northern California where we have what my seminary professors called a Mediterranean climate – we live in basicaly the same kind of weather as the people…

PC(USA)’s Peacemaking Program and Environmental Ministries offices are leading a Travel Study Seminar to Armenia from November 1-12, 2010. On the trip you will: Explore how people of faith care for God’s earth. Visit reforestation sites and pristine forests in…

Fred Bahnson, husband of Food and Faith Blog author Elizabeth, who wrote “The Way of Manna” back in November, wrote this from warm, sunny Florida for the Christian Century. “It was like stepping into the Nigerian village I grew up in as a missionary kid, albeit one with lots of white people. Instead of running on oil, this place derived its energy from contemporary sunlight; aside from a golf cart here and there, everyone walked or rode bikes. At the moment I am sequestered under a clump of bamboo, hiding from the mid-afternoon Florida sun with a tour group of snowbirds…” Read Fred’s article “Farm School” about ECHO. You just might end up there..

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food. Link local farm production to local consumption. Investments in local processing and storage facilities will allow for large scale consumers (e.g. schools, hospitals, small colleges) in rural communities to buy locally produced goods from smaller scale operations. These new and niche markets will leverage the wealth generated from the land, create jobs and repopulate rural communities.