Post Script

McDonalds has a case of fallen arches

Here's a headline we never have expected to see: McDonald's closes restaurants.

Seriously. McDonald's is pulling out of Iceland. The economic crisis has been felt deeply in the country, and the giant burger chain says it is closing operations there due to high costs.

Sky News has the story.

Photo by  iboy_daniel on Flickr.

Bill Gates, Africa and GMO seeds

Much has been said since Bill Gates spoke last week about GMOs and the need for conventional ag technologies in Africa.

"Some people insist on an ideal vision of the environment," Gates said. "They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it, or what the farmers themselves might want."

That's according to a post on the Organic Consumers Association's web site. Gates was speaking at the World Food Summit in Des Moines, Iowa. Read the full story here.

The Botany of Desire ... on TV

The apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. Four plants compose the starring lineup of the film adapation of Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire. and they represent sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control, respectively. Who knew?

An exploration of plants and our relationship with them, the film (like the book before it) takes us from Pollan's backyard to the apple orchards of Kazakhstan, the tulip markets of Amsterdam, a medicinal marijuana hothouse and the potato fields of South America. 

A reviewer on Newsday.com had this to say: "Shot in beautiful high-definition videography. 'The Botany of Desire' is a perfect story for television,' says producer and director Michael Schwartz. 'It takes a world we thought we knew and allows us to see it in an entirely new way.' The special is two hours of pure joy that contains all the requisites of must-see TV - it's intriguing and fascinating, engaging, entertaining and educational. It's brilliant. I just wish I'd thought of it first."

The film was broken up into segments are aired in Madison's Central Library over the past four weeks, but the entire thing (joy!) will be aired at 7 p.m. tomorrow night (Wednesday Oct 28) on Wisconsin Public Television.

For a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, along with local listings, lesson plans and bonus features, go to pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire.

Co-op members' angst grows in Brooklyn

Love your co-op? So do we; which is why we work for Outpost. But we don't have to work for Outpost just to be owners of Outpost ... unlike the souls who trade elbow grease for spinach at a well-known New York co-op.

The Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn was established in 1973, and has grown to 15,000 members. Those members enjoy an impressive discount (up to 40%) on fresh, organic food, but they also have to adhere to a stringent member-volunteer policy; 2.75 hours of work in the co-op every four weeks for every adult member of a household. Missed shifts carry the penalty of makeup shifts, and apparently, these can mount up, leaving members overwhelmed by their planners and abiding sense of inadequacy.

In the New York Times, writer Alana Joblin Ain recounts her experiences at the co-op with humor and self-deprecation in equal measure. It's a fascinating glimpse into a world half-familiar to us, but thankfully not quite.

She writes: "Like any place that wears its ideals on its sleeve, the co-op evokes rage, adoration and all the emotions in between. In 2006, the food Web site chow.com published 'Won't Work for Food,' an essay by a onetime co-op member who described the place as 'something between an earthy-crunchy health food haven and a Soviet-style re-education camp.' Three years later, passionate comments about the piece are still being posted.

Joblin Ain's piece is an amusing tale of good intentions, swiftly followed by disgrace in exile. It's also a deft commentary on the lengths to which we will go for some community spirit and pesticide-free pea shoots. We recommend it.

Mad geniuses encouraged to apply ...

Remember the Department of Energy's call for "transformational" technologies that would lead to a breakthrough in energy?

That's the question asked by the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog. Well, the call was answered and 37 companies came up trumps in the first round, with a combined $151 million awarded.

Read more and see the list of winners here.

Madison to host environmental film fest

An environmental studies institute at UW-Madison is putting on a free environmental film festival.

Starting Nov. 6, nearly 50 films will be shown during the three-day festival, called "Tales from Planet Earth." 

Festival director Gregg Mitman says he hopes to make it a national model, using film to inspire community action on issues like food, health, energy, climate and biodiversity.

Mitman is also interim director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.

Nelson Institute's Center for Culture, History and Environment is hosting the festival along with Working Films. That's a national nonprofit organization that links storytelling through film to activism.

- Wisconsin State Journal

Some very healthy - and persistent - kids at the White House

Obama Foodorama reports delightfully on the White House healthy Kids Fair. Here.

Can organic farming save the planet?

"Organic farming, in and of itself, can effectively reduce global warming. Very few of us know that." - Dr. Timothy Salle, Rodale Institute.

"If organic farming methods were practiced on all the planet's food growing land, it would be like taking more than 1.4 billion cars off the road."

Those are just two of the quotes from this Rodale Institute video on climate change. The video is being aired as part of the group's "Demand Organic" campaign and raises some interesting points.

The nonprofit Rodale Institute was founded in 1947 in Pennsylvania and is behind the long-running "our Farming Systems Trial," a U.S. study comparing organic and conventional farming techniques. The group maintains that organic techniques offer the best solution to global warming and famine.

For more information, go to www.RodaleInstitute.org.

FDA may crack down on meaningless food labels

Good news from the Scientific American online. Ever see the "Smart Choices" check mark on a food item? Or the "heart healthy" label? Well, the people at the FDA aren't impressed, to say the least, saying such labels are misleading. Officials are threatening to pull the plug on seals and labels that ignore unhealthy ingredients inside the box.

The full story here.

GQ magazine tips hat to Alterra

We Milwaukeeans know there are fabulous things going on here, even if the rest of the country think it's all happening on the coasts. The editors at GQ Magazine seem to have their eyes trained midwestward, though, and have deemed Alterra one of the best coffee hangouts in the country.

Well, we knew that, didn't we? Congrats, Alterra!