The Donella Meadows Archive

Ecology and Agriculture -- a Marriage, a Shotgun Wedding, or a Shoot-Out?

Once it was the O-word -- organic farming -- a idea associated with kooks and branded by chemical companies as a sure route to starvation. Now...

score:9, 11/14/1989, ,

Regulating Pesticides -- an Impossible Job

It's an old joke that one should never look too closely at how sausage is made or how legislation is passed. That's also...

score:9, 10/02/1986, ,

Super-Tractors, Super-Cows, Super-Farms

The super-tractor of the future will have sensor beams, sweeping out 20 yards ahead as the tractor moves forward. The beams will detect soil...

score:9, 07/03/1986, ,

A Farm That Thrives Without Chemicals

Wouldn't it be nice to hear, for a change, about a Midwest family farm that is not in trouble? Meet Dick and Sharon Thompson...

score:9, 09/04/1986, ,

Where Do All the Pesticides Go?

Every year American farmers apply 1.3 million tons of pesticides to their fields. When pesticides are sprayed by airplane -- and 65% of them are...

score:9, 09/25/1986, ,

Everything in Nature Wants to Eat Apples

"Apples are wonderful food. Everything in nature wants to eat them. That's why I have to use pesticides." It was late August, and Steve...

score:9, 10/09/1986, ,

Can the World Be Fed Without Pesticides?

"We must feed ourselves. To do that, we must have agricultural chemicals. Without them, the world population will starve," says Norman Borlaug, who won the...

score:9, 10/17/1986, ,

All the Nations Can't Feed Themselves, but All the People Can Be Fed

In the "developing countries" there were 1.7 billion people in 1950. Now there are 3.6 billion. There will be 4.9 billion by...

score:9, 04/09/1987, ,

Hunger and Surplus Rise and Fall Together

The simultaneous occurrence of hunger and of mountains of surplus food is obscene. It's also expensive. And it's persistent, in spite of hunger...

score:9, 05/07/1987, ,

Six Fallacies of Modern Agriculture

Farm subsidies are over $20 billion a year, farmers go broke anyway, pesticides contaminate water and food, and topsoil washes down the river. Why is...

score:9, 07/02/1987, ,

Organic Farms Are Weathering the Drought

Organic farmers have long believed that soils managed without chemical fertilizers produce steadier yields, year in, year out, than soils farmed conventionally. In a season...

score:9, 08/04/1988, ,

Consumer Pressure Speeds up a Farming Revolution

They say money doesn't make the world go round, but sometimes it changes the behavior of human beings wonderfully. I have been trying for...

score:9, 06/01/1989, ,

The Dilemma of Dursban and Dartmouth's Elms

THE DILEMMA OF DURSBAN AND DARTMOUTH'S ELMS Skeletons of elm trees still stand in the valley where I live. They have succumbed to Dutch...

score:9, 08/10/1989, ,

Overdue Thanks to the Soil Bugs

With a Thanksgiving feast spread before you, it's easy to be thankful -- for the food, for those who produced it from the farmers to...

score:9, 11/16/1989, ,

There's Only So Much Room in the Rumen

In Wisconsin dairy farmers are picketing and lobbyists are circling, while the governor decides whether to sign a temporary ban on bovine growth hormone (BGH...

score:9, 03/29/1990, ,

The Family Farm and Sustainable Agriculture Act of 1995

BOONE, IOWA, SEPTEMBER 15, 1995: In Dick Thompson's farmyard, big red barn on one side, classic white farmhouse on the other, President Barbara Bush...

score:9, 06/07/1990, ,

East Europe's Agriculture in Ferment

Seven hundred people are crowded into the central hall of the Budapest University of Economics (called until a few months ago the Karl Marx University...

score:9, 09/06/1990, ,

Pick-Your-Own Land Use Planning

This morning about 100 neighbors and I swarmed like bright-colored locusts over a strawberry field, gleaning fat red berries. Babies snoozed in the shade...

score:9, 06/27/1991, ,

Children, Pesticides, and Long Delays

Remember Alar? It was a chemical used on apples to make them redder and to hold them on the tree longer. Alar was suspected of...

score:9, 07/15/1993, ,

Bovine Growth Hormone -- Not the Only Choice

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of bioengineered bovine growth hormone (bGH), dairy farmers -- and consumers -- have some decisions to...

score:9, 11/25/1993, ,

Cut off from Global Markets, Cuba Invents a New Agriculture

It's hard to believe anything we hear about Cuba. Some people, especially those in official positions, want us to believe that Cuba does no...

score:9, 06/12/1997, ,

Is a Bioengineered Potato Organic?

It's way too tempting for someone who has grown a bunch of carrots any old way to slap the label "organic" on them, claim...

score:9, 07/31/1997, ,

From Dump to Garden: Burlington's Intervale

The Intervale, the green floodplain where the Winooski River winds through Burlington, Vermont, was once the site of flourishing farms. Green Mountain Boy Ethan Allen...

score:9, 07/24/1997, ,

Two Possible Futures for Farming and Food

I have just visited two farms in Europe, both of which claim to demonstrate the future of agriculture -- though they are about as different as...

score:9, 09/18/1997, ,

Veggie Libel Suits Are Meant to Slapp Free Speech

The label "veggie libel law" makes the whole affair sound silly. But Oprah Winfrey is being sued for insulting beef, not beans. And the case...

score:9, 01/22/1998, ,