Check out the most recent issue of the journal Science which takes a look at ways to improve food security as the world's population is expected to top 9 billion by 2050. To best nourish both people and the planet, the journal suggests a rounded approach to a worldwide agricultural revolution by encouraging diets and policies that emphasize local and sustainable food production, along with the implementation of agricultural techniques that utilize biotechnology and ecologically friendly farming solutions.
Karanja is a professor at the University of Nairobi. Nierenberg is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch Insitute in Washington, D.C. Njenga is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nairobi.
Driving through the crowded streets of Kibera slums in Kenya, it's nearly impossible to describe how many people live in this area of about 400 hectares, the equivalent of just over half the size of Central Park in Manhattan.
Everywhere you look, there are people. Anywhere from 700,000 to 1 million people live in what is likely the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa.
And despite the challenges people here face - lack of water and sanitation services, space and lack of land ownership are the big ones - they are thriving and living.
We met a "self-help" group of female farmers in Kibera who are growing food for their families and selling the surplus to their neighbors.
Such groups are present all over Kenya - giving youth, women and vulnerable people the opportunity to organize, share information and skills and ultimately improve their well-being while giving them a voice that otherwise would not be heard.
The women we met were growing vegetables on what they call "vertical farms/gardens." But instead of skyscrapers, these farms are in tall recycled sacks filled with soil, and the women grow crops in them on different levels by poking holes in the bags and mainly planting seeds/seedlings of spinach, kale, sweet pepper and spring onions.
The women's group received training, seeds and sacks from the French NGO Solidarites to start their sack gardens.
The women told us that more than 1,000 women in their neighborhood are growing food in a similar way - something that the International Red Cross recognized as a solution to food security in urban areas during the 2007 and 2008 political crisis in the slums of Nairobi.
For about a month, no food could come into these areas from rural Kenya, but most residents didn't go without food because so many of them were growing crops - in sacks, vacant public land such as that along rail lines and along river banks.
These small gardens could produce big benefits in terms of nutrition, food security and income. All the women told us that they saved money because they no longer had to buy vegetables from the markets or kiosks, and they claimed that the vegetables were fresh and tasted better because they were organically grown - but that sentiment also might come from the pride of growing something themselves.
Mary Mutola has farmed on this land for over two decades. She and the other farmers - more women than men - don't own the land where they grow spinach, kale, spider plant, squash, amaranth and fodder. Instead, the land is owned by the National Social Security Fund, which has allowed the farmers to use the farm through an informal arrangement.
In other words, the farmers have no legal right to the land. They've been forced to stop farming more than once over the years, and although they're getting harassed less frequently, they still face challenges.
About a year ago, the city forced them to stop using untreated wastewater (sewage from a sewer line which they tapped into) to both irrigate and fertilize their crops. Although wastewater can carry a number of risks, including pathogens and contamination from heavy metals, it also provides a rich - and free - source of fertilizer to farmers who don't have the money to buy expensive fertilizer in stores and other inputs. And because of longer periods of drought (likely a result of climate change) in sub-Saharan Africa, the farmers didn't have to depend on rainfall to water their crops.
But even with the loss of their main water supply and nutrient sources, Ms. Mutola and the other farmers are continuing to come up with innovative ways of growing food crops - and incomes - from this farm.
In partnership with Urban Harvest, the farmers are not only growing food to eat and sell but, perhaps surprisingly, also becoming suppliers of seed of traditional leafy African vegetables such as amaranth, spider plant and African nightshade for the commercial vegetable rural farmers who supply the Nairobi city with these high-demand commodities.
Kibera farmers have always grown fodder for livestock feed for both urban and rural farmers. But by establishing a continual source of seed for traditional African vegetables, they're helping dispel the myth that urban agriculture benefits only poor people living in cities.
Using very small plots of land, about 50 square meters, and double dug beds, the farmers can raise seeds very quickly. Fast-growing varieties like amaranth and spider plant take only about three months to produce seeds, worth about 3,000 Kenyan shillings (about $40) in profit. And these seed plots - because they are small - take very little additional time to weed and manage.
The future for these farmers continues to be uncertain. Their land could be taken away, the drought could further jeopardize their crops, and the loss of wastewater for fertilizer could reduce production. But they continue to persevere despite these challenges.
Everywhere I travel in Africa, there's increasing acknowledgement about the importance of nutrition when it comes to treating HIV/AIDS. Many retroviral and HIV/AIDS drugs don't work if patients aren't getting enough vitamins and nutrients in their diets or accumulating enough body fat.
According to Dr. Rosa Costa, Director of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique, many farmers are often too sick to grow crops, but "chickens are easy."
Unlike many crops, raising free-range birds can require few outside inputs and very little maintenance from farmers. Birds can forage for insects and eat kitchen scraps, instead of expensive grains. They provide not only meat and eggs for household use and income, but also pest control and manure for fertilizer.
Jessica Milgroom isn't your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field-literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.
When the park was established in 2001, it was essentially "parked on top of 27,000 people," says Jessica. Some 7,000 of the residents needed to be resettled to other areas, including within the park, which affected their access to food and farmland. Jessica's job is to see what can be done to improve resettlement food security.
But rather than simply recommending intensified agriculture in the park to make better use of less land, Jessica worked with the local community to collect and identify local seed varieties. One of the major problems in Mozambique, as well as other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of seed. As a result, farmers are forced to buy low-quality seed because nothing else is available.
In addition to identifying and collecting seeds, Jessica is working with a farmer's association on seed trials, testing varieties to see what people like best. In addition, farmers are learning how to purify and store seeds (see Innovation of the Week: Investing in Better Food Storage in Africa).
Weevils, the farmers tell Jessica, are worse than ever, destroying both the seed and crops they store in traditional open-air, granaries. But the farmers are now building newer granaries that are more tightly sealed and help prevent not only weevils but also mold and aflatoxins from damaging crops.
Today, farmers and breeders alike have a greater respect for Mozambique's indigenous seed varieties. According to Jessica, one of the biggest accomplishments of the project has been getting breeders and farmers to talk to each other. "It's been interesting for both groups," says Jessica, "and it needs to be a regular discussion" between them.
For the past few months, we've been collecting information about agricultural innovations from all over the world (survey in English and French). We shared the initial responses in September and even more responses in November, but continue to receive interesting information and recommendations from farmers, NGOs, research groups, and policymakers in a multitude of countries. Below are a few tidbits we'd like to share.
The following projects, already featured on the Nourishing the Planet blog, have recently provided information for our survey, further describing their agricultural innovations and helping us as we seek to define innovations that best nourish people as well as the world in our upcoming report, State of the World 2011.
From Never Ending Food in Lilongwe, Malawi: The Nordins are educating others about permaculture and growing indigenous crops to increase income and improve food security. You can read about Danielle's visit to their home and farm here: Malawi's Real "Miracle" and Sweeping Change.
Please continue to share your agriculture innovations with us. We look forward to featuring your success stories on our blog and in Nourishing the Planet. Stay tuned for more updates from the survey-maybe next time it will be your innovation we highlight!
Mokolodi Wildlife Reserve used to be known more for raising livestock than protecting wildlife. But after years of ranching degraded the land, the owner decided to devote the area to protecting elephants, giraffes, impala, kudu, crocodiles, hippos, ostrich, warthogs, and various other animals and birds. But the reserve hasn’t stopped raising food.
In addition to teaching students and the community about conserving and protecting wildlife and the environment, they’re also educating students about permaculture. By growing indigenous vegetables, recycling water for irrigation, and using organic fertilizers—including elephant dung—the Reserve’s Education Center is demonstrating how to grow nutritious food with very little water or chemical inputs. (See Malawi’s Real “Miracle” and Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops.)
I met with Tuelo Lekgowe and his wife, Moho Sehtomo, who are managing the permaculture garden at Mokolodi. Tuelo explained that the organically grown spinach, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, green peppers, garlic, basil, parsley, coriander and other crops raised at the garden are used to feed the school groups who come regularly to learn about not only animals, but also sustainable agriculture. Tuelo and Moho use the garden as a classroom, teaching students about composting, intercropping, water harvesting, and organic agriculture practices. The garden also supplies food for the Education Center and Mokolodi’s restaurant, feeding the hundreds of students and tourists who visit the non-profit reserve each week.
The Mokolodi Reserve is another example of how agriculture and wildlife conservation can go hand-in hand.
Sylvia Banda started Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited in 1986, even though just 30 years ago women weren't allowed to own businesses-or even eligible for loans-in Zambia. She began her business by serving people food she cooked and brought from home on what she calls, a "standing buffet," because she didn't have enough money for tables and chairs.
Not having furniture didn't stop Sylvia's business from taking off; she made almost a hundred dollars after a few days. And with her husband listed as the proprietor of her business because land rights are limited if not inaccessible to women in Zambia, Sylvia was able to grow her small "standing buffet" into three subsidiary businesses.
Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited is dedicated to creating, selling and serving nutritious foods, made from indigenous and traditional products that are purchased from local farmers and merchants. Sylvia provides work for 73 people and has developed partnerships with local development organizations, using her financial and popular success to become a proponent of farmer and employee training. She calls it "economic emancipation."
Sylvia's success has benefited not just her own family, but the wider community as well. And Winrock International, an organization that collects examples of projects focused on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, hopes to extend her positive impact even further still by making her case study available as a resource and model for potential entrepreneurs-and for policy makers and NGOs who support potential entrepreneurs-around the world.
For more information about Sylvia's work and other projects that are focusing on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, see Winrock International's site on Community Food Enterprises.
This Dennison report on the Otter Creek coal tracts likely augurs how political wrangling will shape itself in the coming months and (hopefully) years:
The head of the company that owns more than half the coal in southeastern Montana's Otter Creek Valley said this week that he'll be surprised if anyone bids on state-owned coal there, because the Land Board probably set the minimum price too high.
Chuck Kerr, president of Great Northern Properties in Houston, also told the Gazette State Bureau that the state is asking a lot by requiring potential coal developers to pay an entire "bonus bid" up front.
"I think that's going to be a stretch," he said. "I think 25 cents (per ton) is too high. But we could be surprised."
Get it? Republicans will push against the Land Board, claiming they set the price too high on purpose to prevent the coal from being leased. After all, why not? They have a tendency to treat public land as corporate America's backyard, why not try to pressure the Land Board to essentially give away the state's coal tracts? It's good for teh childs! Well, not so much.
But then that's assuming the fuss and bother over Otter Creek coal isn't just Kabuki theater for the masses. Again, see George Ochenski's short history of the coal tracts: there are probably too many obstacles in the way of coal development in Otter Creek. Here's what he said then:
Unfortunately, it's a fool's game initiated by Republicans but now being perpetuated by Democrats, who hold every seat on the state's Land Board. Ironically, as the nations of the world meet in Copenhagen to wrestle with the disastrous impacts of climate change, Montana's top elected officials continue to greenwash the mining and burning of the most polluting fuel on the planet.
To get back to the physics of politics, it's clearly time for the Democrats on the Land Board to pull the plug on Otter Creek, write off our losses, bring this bad idea to a dead stop, and move on to the change we were promised and so desperately need.
But somehow the coal tracts have come to represent commitment to Montana's rural educational system. If, god forbid, you oppose development in Otter Creek, you hate children in Eastern Montana. It's as simple as that. And as an additional bonus for the Krayton Kernses of the world, by fighting for development in Otter Creek, you can stick it to those know-it-all scientists and their global warming plots to take over the world. You don't even have to develop the coal, all you need to do is make skittish Democrats vote for coal, too, and that's enough.
I went on a pilgrimage and a Board of Regents meeting broke out.
For the uninitiated, the Board of Regents is the autonomous governing body of the Montana University System (MUS), which includes community colleges and the colleges of technology.
The legislature appropriates money to MUS, but it is the Board and Presidents who, through a convoluted and arcane process, set policy for the system and decide who gets what and how much. Under the cloak of academic freedom and constitutional license, the "Board" strenuously safeguards its independence from the grubby clutches of the legislature.
These folks also determine how much more students pay in fees and tuition for the privilege of partaking of the enterprise. Not enough dough? Raise tuition. Or, freeze faculty salaries. Or, lay off staff.
So, just who are these 'Regents' and how do they earn the assignment? The Governor appoints the seven regents, six to seven-year overlapping terms. And this pretty much Schweitzer's crew. (Believe it or not, he re-appointed one Racicot appointee and the term of one Judy Martz (remember her?) appointee ends next year.):
Stephen Barrett (Bozeman) - Chair
Clayton Christian (Missoula) - Vice-Chair
Lila Taylor (Busby)
Lynn Morrison-Hamilton (Havre)
Todd Buchanan (Billings)
Janine Pease (Poplar), seventh member is
Robert Barnosky (Billings), the student regent who serves a one-year term.
Yes, the email is an incoherent mess riddled with puerile and racist remarks. Yes, yes, it's a long litany of rightwing rhetoric, an ugly peek into the garbage-addled, xenophobic, sexist, and paranoid mind of a Fox-News-Glenn-Beck-watchin' wingnut. And, yes, it's disturbing that a Boston police officer and National Guard captain thinks like this - and I'm glad he wrote the email, so he could be duly suspended from bothjobs.
All this is true. But what got me the most was the opening of his email:
"I am a former English teacher, writer..."
Yup. Justin Barrett, the author of this stunning incoherent rant, considers himself an educator and intellectual...
...so what's the under/over on this dude appearing on Beck's show as the victim of liberal elitism and reverse racism?
In the next week, there's going to be a lot of news about the federal budget. Republicans are still trying to kill it. Democrats and President Obama are mostly still trying to pass it. Why?
The federal budget is more than numbers. It is a statement of values and priorities. The values here are decidedly progressive and the priorities are to reform our nation's most profound challenges: health care, energy, and education.
The good news for Montanans is that Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have been supportive of the budget. The bad news is that our Congressman has been a pretty stalwart opponent of change.
Forward Montana is joining a national call-in day today to encourage Congress to get this budget passed. Join us and call Congressman Rehberg - 1-888-299-1447 - and encourage him to support the budget, ask his staff how he will vote for it, and request an update on his views on the budget via email.
I just called and was told that his staff wasn't sure where he was coming down on the budget. This call just takes a couple minutes. Budget negotiations can be seen as awfully inside-the-beltway, but here's the bottom-line -- if we don't get this budget passed, the rest of the agenda so many of us have worked for now for years doesn't stand a chance:
The House Education Committee locked up on a vote on funding of Head Start -- 8-8 right down party lines.
Look, I know that this is a tough budget and all, but this is a really dumb move. There is some data out there that shows that the academic effects of Head Start may wind down a bit in the years after participation. But there's a ton of evidence that Head Start is a great investment that teaches children, helps them earn more later in life, and keeps them out of prison down the road. What's more -- it does it more effectively than other programs with similar goals. BOOM. That's what we call good public policy.
But it gets worse, because Senator Representative Ed Butcher is on the Education Committee, we get gems like this testimony:
We keep seeing this absorbing more and more of the resources, coming in from a direction that goes beyond education
And ... they're well intentioned ... I'm sure they do a lot of good for a bunch of messed up people.
I apparently missed the day where they explained that Head Start wasn't part of the Education Committee's jurisdiction (in Mr. Butcher's mind, the Committee's jurisdiction is limited to 7-16 year-olds; apparently education can't happen to people younger or older than that).
Children's health insurance saves money down the line. Head Start saves money down the line. When liberals call these things investments, we do so for a reason -- because we think it would be nice if we could build some public buildings other than prisons.
David Crisp wonders why the libertarian conservative Rob Natelson wants taxpayers on the hook for the cost of an education at Sidwell for every American student. Price tag: $29k a piece.
It's a good question. One of the things I've often wondered about is why education is one of the areas where libertarians basically give up the ghost on the rest of their theories. They don't rail against government intervention or say that the real driver in cost is government subsidies, they basically just demand that we build an education system that looks a lot like the French health care system -- privately controlled, largely non-profit health care delivery system financed primarily through public insurance (aka vouchers).
Alternately, they even like something closer to Britain's health care system, but with competing networks of hospitals (charter schools).
Anyways, it is all a bit funny.
The strange thing about education, though, is that it is a realm where the fundamental conservative critique is that we pay too much to the workers and we get poor results and the solution is to pay people less. Now, I'm not really sure that either part of this critique is correct, but it is completely baffling. Show me a single corporation on the planet that would conclude that its talent pool for hiring was insufficient and that their proper response is to slash the wages being offered and tell the applicants that they are stupid and I'll show you a firm about to hit really hard times.
Now, it is true that education costs more than it did 50 years ago. But K-12 education is extremely labor intensive. We have teacher to student ratios of probably 25:1 or 30:1. Include other staff -- executive, administrative, athletic, artistic, and support -- and you've got a lot of people working hard for each student. Throw in some particularly high-cost operations like special education (conservatives are pretty good at glossing over this issue) and you need to figure out how to pay for it.
The next piece of this is that people who enter teaching as a profession are not without other options. They come out of school with a B.S. or a B.A. and many public school teachers have advanced degrees, either in education or in a specific field of study.
Although teacher pay may have increased in the last several decades (I honestly don't have inflation-adjusted numbers handy), so has pay in sectors that compete with education, by a lot. If you're a starting college student with some solid math skills and you start evaluating options, which looks more rewarding? Teaching 8th grade math or writing algorithms for Google?
Frankly, given the way that many of our nation's loudest voices (largely from the right) have crapped all over teaching as a profession -- financially and rhetorically -- I'm amazed at the large number of extremely capable people entering the profession (folks like the writers of Intelligent Discontent are the kind of people I'm thinking of).
People choose their jobs for a number of reasons and many of us choose to do work that pays less than what we could earn in other fields because we find the non-monetary rewards to be significant. But teaching and much of other public service hasn't just been degraded financially. Meanwhile, the private sector has been held up as a bizarre pinnacle of brilliance and efficiency (a claim belied by any trip to a Carmike movie theater).
I'm actually pretty supportive of some big think on education policy. Our schools right now work pretty well for kids like me who grow up middle class in a large city in Montana. They don't work so well in other places. But beating up on teachers and their unions is only likely to make the problem worse. Lower pay, less job security, and insults don't improve productivity. They make it worse.
The Montana School Boards Association says the governor's proposed budget will force school districts to cut programs or seek increases in local property taxes.
Executive Director Lance Melton is urging members to contact legislators in hopes they'll be persuaded to spend more on schools.
Republican President of the Montana state Senate, Bob Story, has already said the Governor's budget doesn't cut enough. Of course, slashing the state budget only means higher property taxes. You want permanent property tax relief, Bob?
A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.
Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.
Sounds about right to me. I've always maintained that if you inject religion into, say, science, you're missing the entire point of science. Teaching evolution to students isn't about indoctrinating people into an absurd sort of secular "church," it's an exercise of applying scientific principles to observing the natural world.
The Christian extremist group, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, whose goal appears to be to merge their particular brand of Evangelical Christianity with the state, is appealing the case, claiming that the ruling legitimizes the UC system's attempt to "secularize private religious schools." Pshaw. Religious schools are free to teach whatever they want; but they shouldn't be free from the consequences of their actions. If any school fails to educate students properly, that education shouldn't be recognized by accredited institutions.
Interestingly, the court case touched on a humanities class that was rejected by the UC university system:
For example, in Friday's ruling, Justice Otero upheld the university's rejection of a history course called Christianity's Influence on America. According to a UC professor on the course review committee, the primary text, published by Bob Jones University, "instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events" and evaluates historical figures based on their religious motivations.
Again, seems clear cut to me. Assuming any text is "unerring" in the practice of history is a big no-no. The purpose of history is to evoke different narratives from the past by scrupulous and unbiased research into historical records. To ignore all other interpretations or records in favor of a single text supporting a preconceived bias - well, that's anathema to the discipline.
It's worth repeating that none of this has anything to do with restricting anybody's First Amendment rights. Private schools are free to teach courses stuffed with factually inaccurate material as a form of religious indoctrination -- but they're not free to receive equal academic accreditation for those courses.
When Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he figured out that it is cheaper to pay for college tuition, room and board and books than it is to sentence a person to prison.
The choice, he told about 950 people at a Billings fundraiser Tuesday night, becomes how people want to invest their money: in a solid education or a tax bill.
"It's your money either way," Huckabee said at the Billings Christian Schools Spring Banquet.
This doesn't make any sense at all. Money for prisons is a shared expense. Money for private schools is not. Now I'm all about investing in schools rather than prisons (and, along those lines, Montana definitely went in the wrong direction in the 90s and has some corrective work to pursue, as does our entire country), but I can't figure out the sense of his argument.
Beyond that, I'm not really sure why Huckabee thinks private parochial schools are better than quality public schools in preventing lives of depravity. I suppose he can do that, but making the kinds of arguments he does makes me pretty skeptical of the strength of his own education.
(It looks like Jason and Don's strategy of bringing education issues to the table may be working... - promoted by Jay Stevens)
It seems interesting for candidates to trump education as their primary issue when running for governor. Then again, perhaps not so interesting, but rather a little sad that this critical issue is often given a back seat. After all, our entire modern society has been made possible by the education system.....
Honestly when I heard last week that Neiffer and Pogreba would be running for governor I couldn't help but laugh. "What could they possibly be running on? What makes them better than Schweitzer?" I had to ask.
Which in turn, to my great joy, lead me to find that they were actually running pro education. Trumping issues such as high school preparatory courses, guidance, better standards for teachers/students, and of course more financing for our schools. Their website quite clearly states,
"We are committed to ensuring that Montana's students receive a fully funded, quality education and that Montana's taxpayers are certain that their tax dollars for education are spent efficiently on direct student instruction."
I can only find myself wishing them the best of luck and hoping that their stances on energy policy and the environment are just as strong.
In a world where our education system is slowly slipping down the charts it will be interesting to see if the Pogreba/Neiffer ballet goes anywhere.
Recently, Montana 's rural schools applied to lease state-owned coal in Otter Creek Valley . The idea is to push Governor Schweitzer into getting a deal done that would allow a mining company to mine the coal, from which agreement, the state's school system would get a cut, not to mention the jobs and money that would necessarily flow into the community.
Schools are naturally concerned about funding. They were shorted in the 2007 state legislature, and the Good Guv has told them not to expect much of an increase in the next session, either.
Republican hacks jumped to attack. (Possible former?) House Speaker Scott Sales called Schweitzer's remarks hypocritical because he, you know, spent money on schools in 2007, and blamed the Guv's spending for the upcoming national recession. And Republican gubernatorial candidate, Roy Brown, said the Good Guv won't develop the coal tracts that would give schools a funding boost.
So, the principled conservative position on education is basically this: schools are rapacious, wasteful institutions that a new Republican governor would give more money to. Maybe Scott and Roy should get their anti-schools rhetoric together before they issue their press statements.
I'd also add that, if the schools are facing upcoming shortages, these jokers could have done something about it in the last legislative session. Only they didn't. In fact, Sales went even further and was against the education spending increases as they were proposed. If schools are facing budget crunches, Sales et al. are the biggest culprits. His brand of radical conservatism wants to destroy public schooling, not preserve it.
Second, schools tying themselves to coal is a bad idea. I've written before on the indications that coal is a dying industry. Siphoning off money from the sale of public coal would put money into school coffers, for the short term. But what about ten years from now? Five years, when coal prices skyrocket because of a carbon tax? Mining operations halt, and the state is left with land devastated from coal extraction, and no revenue can be made off it?
Such an agreement would benefit the big energy company that would mine the coal, probably at a state-subsidized price. And it's telling exactly which candidate is supporting the idea. (The Oil man?)
Third, mining coal from the Otter Creek tracts is simply not feasible. Due to the patchwork array of state lands there, negotiating a deal there is difficult, at best; and even if a deal were made, there's no rail line, and none likely to be built. In short, it ain't gonna happen.
And there's a better way to make money off of state lands. Ochenski:
Ironically, at the same time the rural educators were trumpeting Otter Creek as their fiscal salvation, Madison Valley Renewable Energy and its partners were moving ahead with leasing state lands near Norris for a wind energy project they say will eventually cover some 14,000 acres. Their test towers are going up now and if all goes as planned, 150 megawatts of clean wind energy will be available for sale with 3.1 percent of the revenue going to-you guessed it-Montana's schools. A similar wind development near Judith Gap produced $50,000 last year from land leases and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.
In that editorial, Ochenski says that the Montana Rural Education Association "got some bad advice" in staking its future to the Otter Creek coal tracts, which begs the question, from whom?
Let's see. Who could that be? Who benefits from distracting the public from who is actually responsible for shorting Montana 's schools, financially...presenting a false promise that Big Energy is Montana 's fiscal salvation...and making the Good Guv look responsible for it all?
Jessica Milgroom isn't your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field-literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.
For the past few months, we've been collecting information about agricultural innovations from all over the world (