Last week, National Geographic took on the explosive impactthat the widespread use of chemical nitrogen fertilizer to boost crop production has on human health and the environment. Scientists have been leading a clarion call about the impacts of excess nitrogen for decades, but the issue remains little known, even though the impacts touch every part of our lives.

Do good things happen when we try to improve on Nature’s way of doing things?

Usually not.

Read the full post on civileats.com and there links on learning more.

” … about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States goes uneaten. That amounts to $165 billion of wasted food every year …”

” … NRDC estimated that the unsold broccoli grown in just one county (Monterey County, California) required 2.5 billion gallons of water to grow (yes, that billions with a “b”, in a state where the water wars will only intensify as water becomes more scarce). Chemical fertilizers and pesticides impact farmworkers and the environment whether the product makes it to market or not.”

Owning a farm is a tough business.

read the full article at the Institute for Agriculture and Food Policy website.

Poster design by Jesse Ciarmataro, of H5P Design

But consider the cost of losing your favorite local bookstore. How do you quantify the lost community fundraising events, the empty storefront, the missing opportunities to stumble across obscure books you hadn’t thought to search for online… never mind the tax revenues lost to sales made outside your city, county, state lines?

read the full article on civil eats

One industry survey found that people are more positive about frozen vegetables than they are about frozen entrees, with “significant concerns with the nutritional value and a general feeling that frozen foods are not as good as fresh,” according to Ad Age.

I am one of those people. I have some frozen vegetables in my freezer – for emergencies. But I still like fresh from a Farmers’ Market or store first. The frozen ones may be more nutritious than I think they are (those meals are as bad as I think they are) – but I still think the flavor of fresh of better.

read the full story on npr.org