Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

Some good arguments for 20-somethings to start defining your life right now.

TEDx Talks: LZ Granderson on the myth of the gay agenda

A humorous look at the "big gay lifestyle" and what the gay agenda REALLY means

The Other Inconvenient Truth

I've been feeling pretty drained after spending weeks and weeks writing this urban agriculture review, almost to the point of wishing I'd never heard about it at all. But then I watched this following video and now I'm very much determined that the work I'm helping with is important and necessary.

The following is a short video on the HUGE impact agriculture is having on the planet. We need food for the 7 billion people on this earth, but we need to produce it in a way that won't kill the planet. Think that we can keep going the way we are now with agriculture? Think again - we're running out of land, water, and energy to sustain what we have now. There is no silver bullet to this problem so we're gonna need everyone on board to talk about solutions. Every place is going to have a different solution, be it GM crops, local food, greywater, drip irrigation, or vertical farming. But it's important that we all do this.



A more complete version of that video is given here with Jonathan Foley's talk at TEDxTC. Summary from TED shown below.

A skyrocketing demand for food means that agriculture has become the largest driver of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental destruction. At TEDxTC Jonathan Foley shows why we desperately need to begin "terraculture" -- farming for the whole planet. Jonathan Foley studies complex environmental systems and their affects on society. His computer models have shown the deep impact agriculture is having on our planet.

Jame Oliver: Teach every child about food

This is one of my favorite TED talks. It's SO, SO important to teach kids now where their food comes from, especially with supermarkets everywhere and agriculture becoming less and less a tangible idea for kids growing up in the cities. It's not just about the feel-good urban agriculture of community gardens or farmers market, it's about knowing what goes into growing food and learning how to be self sufficient. If this generation of kids can't tell what the basic vegetable names are, society has a pretty huge problem on their hands once the current generation of farmers are gone. Everyone's gotta eat and someone has to grow the food.

Birke Baehr: What's wrong with our food system

This kid is 11 and he's talking about organic farming and the local movement, stuff I never even thought about until college! Man, I wish I had his oral presentation skills at his age! This is what the world needs, more kids like him. That being said, I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss genetically engineered food as he. Genetic alterations happen naturally (think transposable genetic elements) and having some genetic strains that are more drought tolerant will definitely be useful in the future. The problem with such GM food is decreasing the genetic diversity and not having the whole pool of diversity to go back to if something happens (ie flood happens and you don't have any genetic strains that survive better under very wet conditions). And of course, there's always the possibility of introducing a combination of genetic material into the ecosystem that reacts poorly.