Personal Statement

If You Eat Beef, Track Its Origins

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A JBS facility in Tucuma, Brazil. JONNE RORIZ / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Reducing meat in our diet was easier living in India, and we committed specifically to cutting beef consumption. This effort has been assisted by awareness of this issue. Thanks to Yale e360 for bringing the work of this team to our attention:

Marcel Gomes (center) with colleagues at Repórter Brasil’s offices in São Paulo. GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE

Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger

Journalist Marcel Gomes has traced beef in supermarkets and fast food restaurants in the U.S. and Europe to Brazilian ranches on illegally cleared land. In an e360 interview, he talks about the challenges of documenting the supply chains and getting companies to clean them up.

Investigative journalism can be a very deep dive. By the end of his probe into the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest meat processing and packing company, Marcel Gomes reckons he and his team at the São Paulo-based nonprofit Repórter Brasil knew more about the origins of the beef it supplies from the Amazon to the world’s hamburger chains and supermarkets than the company itself. Continue reading →

English Apple Heritage

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Today completes a trifecta of shared articles about trees, and Sam Knight gets extra thanks for the link with a part of food heritage our family is especially fond of (which led to finding the video above):

Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker

The English Apple Is Disappearing

As the country loses its local cultivars, an orchard owner and a group of biologists are working to record and map every variety of apple tree they can find in the West of England.

In June, 1899, Sabine Baring-Gould, an English rector, collector of folk songs, and author of a truly prodigious quantity of prose, was putting the finishing touches on “A Book of the West,” a two-volume study of Devon and Cornwall. Baring-Gould, who had fifteen children and kept a tame bat, wrote more than a thousand literary works, including some thirty novels, a biography of Napoleon, and an influential study of werewolves. Continue reading →

How Much Communication Between Trees?

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Baobab trees in Madagascar.
Photograph: Dave Carr/Getty Images

Ancient oak trees in Glastonbury, Somerset. Photograph: Eddie Linssen/Alamy

I acknowledge my enthusiasm for the idea that there is something going on between trees. I always want to hear more about it. Those who know me well joke that I am anti-woo-woo; but this one topic betrays a soft spot for the as-yet not fully explained. So I am thankful to Daniel Immerwahr for reminding me of the boundaries of what we know (so far):

A bristlecone pine tree, one of the oldest living organisms on Earth. Photograph: Piriya Photography/Getty Images

Mother trees and socialist forests: is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?

In the past 10 years the idea that trees communicate with and look after each other has gained widespread currency. But have these claims outstripped the evidence?

There are a lot of humans. Teeming is perhaps an unkind word, but when 8 billion people cram themselves on to a planet that, three centuries before, held less than a tenth of that number, it seems apt. Eight billion hot-breathed individuals, downloading apps and piling into buses and shoving their plasticky waste into bins – it is a stupefying and occasionally sickening thought. Continue reading →

Honeybees & Salvation

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Sarah Kliff

We had an experience with honeybees in our home in Costa Rica that echoes the one related below. We did get someone to help us extract the colony from under our roof and re-situate it as you can see in this photo. We were fortunate to find that man who did the extraction, but my takeaway was not that honeybees do not need saving. Read on:

Honeybees Invaded My House, and No One Would Help

Responding to fears of a “honeybee collapse,” 30 states have passed laws to protect the pollinators. But when they invaded my house, I learned that the honeybees didn’t need saving.

I noticed the first bee one afternoon as my dog gleefully chased it around the house. When the pest settled on a window by the stairwell, I swatted it with a cookbook and cleaned up the mess. Continue reading →

Oobli, Brazzein & Revolution In Sweetness

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In our extended family there are several cases of diabetes that have made me interested in sugar and its alternatives. Stevia came to my attention while working in Paraguay, when honey was my primary interest, because stevia is native to that place. Stevia is a taste of place product as much as any other we have come to share in our current work.

But neither stevia nor have any other so-called sugar alternatives have featured in our work. Still, this article by Yasmin Tayag in The Atlantic fits perfectly as a theme in our pages:

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

A New Sweetener Has Joined the Ranks of Aspartame and Stevia

Unfortunately, it’s still nothing like real sugar.

A few months ago, my doctor uttered a phrase I’d long dreaded: Your blood sugar is too high. With my family history of diabetes, and occasional powerful cravings for chocolate, I knew this was coming and what it would mean: To satisfy my sweet fix, I’d have to turn to sugar substitutes. Ughhhh. Continue reading →

Marshes Matter, And This One More Than Many

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The outer edge of the Nartë lagoon in Vlorë, Albania. YURIY BRYKAYLO / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

I have worked in some of Albania’s most important coastal and inland bird habitats, though not this one. My time working there is not my only reason for caring about this particular location. Read on–thanks as always to Fred Pearce–to understand why it matters so much. No offense intended to Jared Kushner, but this is not one of his better ideas. The destruction is not worth whatever it is he is hoping to accomplish:

Jared Kushner Has Big Plans for Delta of Europe’s Last Wild River

Albania’s Vjosë River is known as Europe’s last wild river, and its pristine delta is a haven for migratory birds. As plans for luxury developments there — spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — move ahead, conservationists are sounding the alarm.

It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. Continue reading →

The Paper Log House On View Until December

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The Paper Log House at The Glass House. Photo by Michael Biondo.

The building in the background of the photo above has never featured in any of our architecture-focused posts before, even though architecture has been a key theme since our start, and especially after hosting these interns in India. I know why I never wanted that particular architect in our pages, but nevermind that. This post is about another architect’s achievement, which I plan to visit if I get close enough before December:

SHIGERU BAN: THE PAPER LOG HOUSE

The Glass House, Shigeru Ban Architects (SBA), and The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union announce the completion of Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House at The Glass House. Students from The Cooper Union joined in erecting the structure through a unique opportunity offered this semester for the university’s Building Technology course. The collaborative installation will be on display April 15th through December 15th 2024 for The Glass House’s more than 13,000 annual visitors. Continue reading →

Gigantomania

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Docked at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, known as the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (Gary Shteyngart)

On a topic I have found disgusting for a long time, and probably do not need more data points, in these hands at least I gain a new perspective on cruise ships.

Gary Shteyngart is a humorist, but no one who chose to go on the cruise he is writing about is likely to find his observations funny.

He punches down, rather than up, which is a type of humor I do not like; but he is honest about his purpose:

CRYING MYSELF TO SLEEP ON THE BIGGEST CRUISE SHIP EVER

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

Day 1

My first glimpse of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optical nerve to try again. Continue reading →

Finca San Ignacio, High Elevation Enlightenment

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The land of Finca San Ignacio is 57% covered by forest, a form of conservation that is both generous to the planet and beneficial to the quality of the coffee. Shade-grown coffee has numerous environmental benefits, and the natural process of preparing the beans after harvest makes this coffee sweeter than the washed method allows.

This farm is in the highlands of the Los Santos growing region. In a bend to circularity, high elevation not only benefits coffee quality but is also where forest conservation has greater impact. Water first enters the earth’s filtration and storage systems with rains at higher elevations. Conservation of forest up there is more valuable than conservation at the base of the mountain. We see enlightenment at Finca San Ignacio.

Single Estate Coffee, Double Taste Of Place

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The last time we introduced a varietal of coffee that was new to Organikos it had taken about a year to settle on the farm we would source from for the longer term. For the geisha varietal that farm is Hacienda La Pradera. During the last two years offering their coffee we have underestimated the demand and run out of coffee long before the new harvest is available. So, as of now, we have no geisha to offer until April.

But as of this week, we have a new (to us) varietal, from a new (to us) farm. Obata is a hybrid brought to Costa Rica in 2014 by the Costa Rican Coffee Institute (ICAFE), prized for its resistance to rust. Finca El Escondido, in the Chirripo sub-region of Brunca may be the most successful farm to grow it so far. Continue reading →

The Irony Of Patriotic Fervor

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There is an interview with Jill Lepore discussing this book to the left, which I link to below. It got me thinking about an earlier post I wrote about having read April Morning and The Hessian in my teens and my brief encounter with their author Howard Fast. That post was primarily a thank you to the librarians who got me interested in reading. I knew from the return address on the letter he sent me that Mr. Fast lived on my same street, a five minute walk from my home. I enjoyed that fact because I enjoyed the two of his books that I had read. But I never saw him after the library lecture.

Who I did see frequently, because he drove an easily identifiable red convertible Cadillac, and also lived close by, was Roy Cohn. Yes, that guy. If you know a certain bit of mid-20th Century history, the bit called the Red Scare, you might understand my first glimpse of irony. I had learned that Howard Fast was punished early in his career for his political beliefs. By the time I knew who Roy Cohn was I knew he had something to do with that punishment, directly or indirectly. What I found ironic, as a teenager, was that Howard Fast was influential on my sense of why patriotism exists; and Roy Cohn, a self-proclaimed protector of American values, made me fear patriotism. I always wondered if they knew they lived so close to one another. History does not seem to have recorded anything about that. The interview by Julien Crockett below reminded me of that irony of patriotic fervor I sensed in my teens:

The Hold of the Dead Over the Living: A Conversation with Jill Lepore

“I WROTE THESE essays during a period of terrible, tragic decline in the United States,” historian Jill Lepore writes in the introduction to her new essay collection, The Deadline. Wide-ranging and often provocative, the essays cover the past decade of “political violence, endless vicious culture war, a series of constitutional crises, catastrophic climate change, and a global pandemic.” In short, “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.” Continue reading →

Dragon Fruit, Pineapple & Tropical Mix, Oh My

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It started with the dehydrated Pitaya. I was sent a sample. I did not open it for many days because the last time a food artisan tried making something from this fruit I did not like it. Love the fruit, did not love that attempt at hot sauce. The man who sent me the sample called me to ask how I liked what he sent, and because the sample was sitting right next to me I opened it and tried it. Oh. My.

Then I opened the pineapple. Oh my, again.

And then the mix of mango, pineapple and papaya, the latter of which is difficult to dehydrate without making tough to chew. Again, oh my.

So now all three are in our packaging, and going in the Authentica shops today.

Authentica, Nicoya Peninsula

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Traveling by car from Monteverde to Palo Verde National Park should take about 90 minutes

The Nicoya Peninsula is one of the Blue Zones we have mentioned previously. For our family there is a memorable connection to the wetlands area where we are opening a shop this month, just as there was in Tamarindo. In 1998 we had a dozen family members visiting and organized a small bus to transport us to Arenal, Monteverde, and onward to the Palo Verde National Park. Continue reading →

Crossings, By Ben Goldfarb

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This journalist and author of the book to the left, surprisingly, has not appeared in our pages before. Here is what he says about himself:

Hi, I’m Ben, an independent conservation journalist. I’m the author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet, named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, and Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

And about the book he shares what others have said:

An eye-opening and witty account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager.

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. Continue reading →