Searching for Our Untapped Sources of Power
by Elizabeth Sawin
— March 19, 2003 —
You’ve called your Senators and your Representatives.
Or perhaps you have called the White House (possibly many times).
You have signed petitions.
Or you have stood with groups of your neighbors on a bridge, at city hall, or on your town green, holding up a sign saying NO WAR ON IRAQ.
Perhaps you have taken your children with [...]
Our Burdened Bodies
by Elizabeth Sawin
— March 3, 2003 —
Scientists call the accumulation of chemical contaminants – like PCBs, mercury, and pesticides – within a person’s body their body burden.
Body burden is just a number – a concentration in parts per billion or micrograms per liter. But, technical as it is, the term calls forth an image too; an image of a body [...]
Why Are Agricultural Trade Disputes Trapped in Biotechnology?
by Hal Hamilton
— March 1, 2003 —
The weed-killer Roundup and “Roundup-Ready” biotech crops have become dominant features of U.S. crop farming as well as the subject of trade disputes with the rest of the world. Do we really want our negotiators promoting the products of a few chemical companies? Shouldn’t they be promoting a wider range of solutions for agriculture [...]
Petitioning a Government That Does Not Yet Exist
by Elizabeth Sawin
— February 3, 2003 —
Petitions have been arriving in a flurry in my email in-box lately. I have some doubts about the effectiveness of all this petitioning and tend to be quick with the delete button, but one recent petition drew me in.
The message itself – which stated that the United Nations is collecting signatures of people opposed [...]
Agribusiness Executives Tune-Up at Harvard
by Hal Hamilton
— January 27, 2003 —
I felt a bit like a fish out of water as I walked into the Harvard Business School Agribusiness Executive Seminar. My whole professional life has been spent working on behalf of farming communities. At Harvard I was in the midst of a fraternity of people who run the food system.
There were 160 participants, [...]
