Status Updates From Hot: Living Through the Nex...

"We have one question for the political leaders of the world. If you can find not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, the bankers, and their bonuses, how is it that you cannot find the money to bail out the planet, the poor, and our children?"

"A calculation by the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit group in New York State, found that if no-till was used on all 3.5 billion acres of the earth's tillable land, it would sequester half of humanity's annual greenhouse gas emissions."

"The main obstacle to ecological farming is that it takes three to five years to make the transition from the conventional way of doing things. Most farmers don't want to wait that long. They can't. They are already on the edge of survival."

"China's farmers have centuries of experience with organic
fertilizer," I said. "Why are they using so many chemicals now?"
"The government subsidizes it," Jiang replied. "And farmers have used chemical fertilizers so long that the soil fertility has declined. So now the soil needs even more fertilizer to maintain yields. Adding more fertilizer reduces soil fertility even more, so it's a vicious circle."