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By Jane Black 

Photo Credit: Molly McDonald Peterson

Originally Published in Flavor

At last, some good news for Chesapeake Bay fish lovers. Three years after policymakers drastically restricted the blue crab catch, the number of our beloved blues reached 461 million, its second-highest level in more than a decade.

But with the good comes the bad. While blue crabs are thriving, menhaden, a little-known member of the herring family, is in very bad shape. Schools of menhaden, which help filter the polluted waters of the Bay and are a primary source of food for striped bass and bluefish, are being decimated. The stock is at its lowest level in 54 years.

The mixed news is one more example of how difficult it is to manage a complex eco-system like the Chesapeake Bay. It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole: Get rid of one problem and up pops another. But it also proves that bold policies can have critical, even rapid, impact.

Environmentalists hope that like the blue crab, menhaden soon will earn new protections to help the species recover and improve the wider health of the Bay.

Read the full article.

By Fred Bahnson

Originally Published in Sojourners.

It's eight o'clock in the morning and I am standing at the base of perhaps the only mountain in southwest Florida. Actually, it's more of a hill. According to the plaque in front of me, this 50-foot-high, bulldozer-built mound is called the Tropical Highlands. The plaque’s description reads: "Steep land subject to severe eroding."

Joel Wildasin is the intern in charge of this part of the Global Farm, part of the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, or ECHO. He points uphill to the right to several terraces, a good method to slow erosion, but on the hill's left side is a better system. It's called SALT: Sloping Agricultural Land Technology, an intercropping pattern that alternates perennial hedgerows with annual cash crops. According to the folks here at ECHO, the SALT system outperforms terraces when growing crops on steep tropical hillsides.

I carefully study the left-hand slope. At first the overall effect is one of contained chaos; there are just too many different kinds of plants here to make sense of. Then I begin to see. There are three hedgerows roughly 75 feet long and spaced at intervals of 12 feet, each hugging the slope's contour. Within the...

In 2001, IATP Food and Community Fellow Brahm Ahmadi and two friends envisioned a grocery store in West Oakland, CA, that could serve the neighborhood with a selection of fresh foods and also act as a hub for community building, social interaction and health education. They believed that an independent and locally owned grocery store, with strong ties in the community, could best serve the food preferences of West Oakland residents, as well as support their social and cultural needs.

In 2002 they took the first step, founding a nonprofit called People’s Grocery, which focused on smaller-scale food projects. Nearly 10 years later, Brahm is about to make that original grocery store vision a reality.

Peoples Community Market (PCM) will be a unique, fresh and affordable food store in the inner city community of West Oakland that demonstrates new ways of supporting the health of low-income families.

Their slogan, "more than a grocery store," is centered on the belief that food stores can do more to support their communities and can offer more value to customers beyond retailing quality fresh foods. Plans for PCM include an...

Originally posted on The Huffington Post.

Next year, developers plan to apply for permits for the construction of America's largest open-pit copper and gold mine, in the heart of Alaska's most valuable salmon runs. It's not too late for us to stop them if we act now. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently considering requests from stakeholders to use its power under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay. FRESH, Parent Earth and Trout Unlimited are combining grassroots forces to take action and I hope you'll join us by signing the petition!

Pebble Mine would cover 20 square miles in the Bristol Bay watershed, and require the construction of the world's largest earthen dam for a 10 square mile waste containment pond. Up to 10 billion tons of toxic mine wastes could be produced. Any release of these wastes could cause irreparable damage to the Bristol Bay salmon runs.

Even worse: while our wild salmon are under threat, genetically modified salmon may be introduced to the market any day. We've brought you exclusive footage with Paul Greenberg, best-selling author of Four Fish. Check it out above! He explains why hybrid Frankensalmon has no place on our tables, especially when we have an abundant, healthy alternative.