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Organic Coffee in Costa Rica: A Battle of David vs. Goliath?
“To be honest, organic coffee could become a dying breed in Costa Rica.” Leland Westie and I stare at each other, neither of us quite sure how to continue the conversation. Westie seems startled by his...
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Photo Story: The Chocolate Tale
Hi hi! So sorry to be out of commission for so long! It’s been a busy couple of weeks with applications and paper edits and work, but I’m back and all backed up with stories to write about! Here is one...
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A Transcontinental Farmers' Market: Exclusive Interview with Kenneth Lander...
One of my favorite things about writing this blog is that it enables me to have really interesting conversations with really interesting people. Case in point: when I visited Monteverde, I knew that...
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Cuba: Lessons to be Learned for Sustainable Living?
I can’t forget the wistful stares. “How lucky you are to come and visit us! We’d like to travel as well and see the world.” Legally, there is no problem anymore since the exit visa requirement was...
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Food In the Sustainable Development Goals: Great Ideas, But What About Demand?
The finalized text for the Sustainable Development Goals was published on August 1st. I was curious to see what it had to say on sustainable food and agricultural systems. I summarize my thoughts below...
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Too Strong Coffee? Concentration at the Top and Anti-Trust Concerns
The coffee supply chain is famously shaped like an hourglass (or, if you will, a drip coffee machine): the broad demand at the top is connected to the millions of small producers at the bottom by a...
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Urban Gardens and Lifestyle Choices
Aaand… back to regular scheduled programming. The past month has been pretty overwhelming with writing assignments, seminars, cross-Atlantic flights and the like. Now I’m back in my Costa Rican garden...
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Food: Wasted, Celebrated, Fought Over. A Cross-Section.
For cultures of the past facing the vagaries of an unpredictable environment, wastefulness was often dangerous. It invited death. Modernization has largely enabled us to turn our backs on that...
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Please Don’t Stop the Moo-sic: Is Less Meat Still No Option?
As we are approaching our hottest year yet and historical climate talks, meat-free diets are still a political taboo. Even the official sustainable menu of COP21 has eschewed opening this Pandora’s...
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Imagining A World Without Growth – But Seriously!
I am an unabashed New York Times enthusiast. It’s the only news source that I subscribe to, and its reporting is generally excellent. Thus, once a topic close to my heart is picked up by the NY Times,...
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Putting Meat on the Bones of a Climate Agreement
One of the main activities of Mercator alumni is publishing a German-language magazine called adhoc international that treats global public policy challenges from a practitioner’s perspective. Of...
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Taking The Pulse on The Year of Pulses
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been on a roll lately with important and inspired yearly foci. After last year’s Year of the Soils, 2016 highlights a much-neglected food group:...
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Food Forests in Colombia
I just came back from a work trip to Colombia which had taken up all my available time and resources for weeks on end. However, in Colombia I also found inspiration and motivation for more posts, more...
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North and South American Food Links (Link Roundup)
This week there has been some seriously great writing about under-the-radar topics that concern food and agriculture, but provide more general insights on the links between countries, sectors and...
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Too Big to be Challenged? Consolidation in the Global Agrochemical World
I’ve been thinking a lot about power lately. Market power, to be precise. The coffee industry has always been relatively concentrated, but currently it is undergoing a period of consolidation that is...
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(Food) Politics after Trump
If my readership is anything like myself, you probably spent the last week in alternate states of disbelief and real panic over the election of Donald J. Trump as next US President. Enough analyses...
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Happy Earth Overshoot Day – Earlier Again…
Happy Earth Overshoot Day! Well, actually, it’s not a holiday. Today, August 2nd 2017, we have used up this year’s biocapacity on Earth – that is, the ecological resources the planet is able to...
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Recap: LiveWell for Low-Impact Food In Europe conference!
Last week, I turned down the possibility to attend a training on “How to Deal with Lobbyists” (so glamorous) to instead learn about the sustainable food policy agenda in Europe – and I have to say, I...
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Organic Coffee in Costa Rica: A Battle of David vs. Goliath?
“To be honest, organic coffee could become a dying breed in Costa Rica.” Leland Westie and I stare at each other, neither of us quite sure how to continue the conversation. Westie seems startled by his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Photo Story: The Chocolate Tale
Hi hi! So sorry to be out of commission for so long! It’s been a busy couple of weeks with applications and paper edits and work, but I’m back and all backed up with stories to write about! Here is one...
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