Word: farmerly
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...Gillen has a face like his farmland-brown and a little bit broken. "I don't know how we're going to make it," the farmer says as he looks at some of his cows huddling under a bridge to escape the burning sun. Gillen, 66, has only 20 cows left from a herd of 450. After three years of drought in southwestern Colorado, Gillen's fields are parched, his irrigation water is spent, and he has been selling off land and livestock to cover debts. His banker keeps telling him that he should find some other line of work...
...there is hope. Many farmers are returning to traditional methods promoted by Navdanya (Nine Seeds), an organization based in New Delhi that Shiva helped found 11 years ago. Navdanya encourages farmers to produce hardy native varieties of crops that can be grown organically with natural fertilizer and no artificial chemicals. The group works in an area for three years, helping local farmers form their own self-supporting organization and seed bank. Navdanya has spread to some 80 districts in 12 states and has collected more than 2,000 seed varieties. It has set up a marketing network through which farmers...
What could be better for the environment than a cheap, simple way for farmers to double or triple their output while using fewer pesticides on less land? According to Rockefeller University environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel, if the world's average farmer achieved the yield of the average American maize grower, the planet could feed 10 billion people on just half the crop land in use today. Of course it's possible that some genetically modified foods may carry health risks to humans (although none have so far been proved in foods that have been brought to market...
...across a tiny, muddy island on the outskirts of Nanjing, dodging several avant-garde sculptures and art installations along the way."Really?" asked the artist, as his round face broke into a smile. "That's great!" A group of fellow Nanjing artists laughed and pointed at the leather-faced farmer in a worn Mao jacket who, along with his wife and son, was cheerfully scooping armfuls of seaweed from Yu's installation: a giant ditch in the shape of a gingerbread man, which was filled with water and what was once $50 worth of seaweed...
...contemporary artwork, to meet up with my seaweed-artist friend, Yu. "I am so happy that the peasants took my seaweed," he said. "It adds the final step to the evolution of life symbolized in that artwork. What more could an artist wish for but that even a farmer gains something new from his work?" He paused, and for a moment I wondered if Yu really imagined the farmer was sitting up thinking about primordial soup as symbolized in installation art. But Yu, like many of his Nanjing compatriots, was humorously realistic. He knows art can be nourishing in many...