Over a Month Ago
The price of rice is rising, and this is bad news for near half of the world’s population who depend on it for their daily fill. Earlier this year, a wave of pests and disease swept across Vietnam’s rice fields, decimating crops and causing several rice producing countries to limit their export in order to secure their domestic stock. The world seems to teetering on the brink of a global food crisis, in times where population explosion demands more than ever from the agricultural industrial machine.
And an industry it is. In the 1960’s, the US-funded “Green Revolution” brought monocultural practices to Asia and Latin America, introducing farming practices that focus on a few, chemical fertilizer-reliant crops, optimized for yield, not nutritional value or suitability to local conditions. Monoculture production promised to do for food production what the Model T had done for auto production, and at first glance it worked, the soil boosted by oil-based fertilizer.
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environment, humanity | 5 Comments
Over a Month Ago
Today, I was invited to a design charette hosted by SIAT’s Ron Wakkary. It was a 2.5 hour gathering with about 15 talented designers and thinkers from SFU. The goal of the charette was to come up with interaction design concepts for a solar powered house. The focus was partly on raising occupant awareness of their power consumption habits, but most importantly to enrichen the experience of living in the house.
The project is a big one, with 2 other universities in Canada joining SFU to form “Team North”. The concept house is called “North House”, and will be one of 20 entries to the 2009 Solar Decathlon, put on by the US Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
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design, environment | No Comments
Over a Month Ago
“You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not
- hunt down your competitors,
- destroy their food, or
- deny them access to food.
In other words, you may compete buy you may not wage war.”
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environment, humanity | 2 Comments