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Fair trade

Pick your poison
Nikki van der Gaag shows how we live in a chemical soup of our own making.

A fable for tomorrow
Rachel Carson’s dire predictions still send chills down the spine.

Petrified forests
The terrible legacy of Vietnam’s Agent Orange by Jim Trautman.

Crossed bills and broken eggs
Nikki van der Gaag interviews Theo Colborn about the threat pesticides pose to our genetic future.

PESTICIDES – THE FACTS

Kicking the chemical habit
Peter Rosset champions the benefits — and the productivity — of small farms.

Illustration: ERIC JONES

A is for apple, P is for pesticide
An alphabet guide to the pesticides in your daily food.

HARTMUT SCHWARZBACH / STILL PICTURESCotton tales
The chemicals used on cotton are some of the most hazardous in the world. But there are alternatives, explains Dorothy Myers.

Organic matters
Supara Janchitfah,Vasana Chinvarakorn, Jason Alexandra and Mutizwa Mukute report on farmers who are trying to do things differently.

Action and Worth Reading
FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR

It would be fair to say that this magazine has changed my life. Or at least my eating habits. The more I learned about pesticides, the more I determined that my family and I would eat as few of them as possible.

So for starters, I’ve joined the nearest ‘box’ scheme. Local organic vegetables and fruit are delivered once a week to a central collection point, which for me is a house just around the corner.

Every Thursday evening after work I walk around the block on the way home and pick up my cardboard box. The rest of our organic products we buy from the local supermarket which, thanks to the debates on genetically modified food, is stocking more and more organic food.

But I was still surprised at the level of concern when I presented my ideas for this magazine to my NI colleagues one wet Wednesday morning. Which pesticides were used on our food? How come organic food is so expensive? Can organic farms feed the world?

Nikki van der Gaag.I have tried to answer some of their questions in this issue. And I’m sure you will have more, because when it comes to what we eat we all have an opinion. Which is why this ought to be a magazine that is close to our hearts – or rather, our stomachs.
The editor's signature.
Nikki van der Gaag
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
nikkivdg@newint.org
THIS
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FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

Letters
The other military group in Peru; AIDS in Zambia; the complexities of the war in Tigray and Eritrea; and a young American discovers the Saharawis.
PLUS Letter from Lebanon – Reem Haddad reports from a bomb-struck Beirut.

Factfile – Plastic
The twists and turns of our favourite material.

View from the South
Eduardo Galeano opens a window on words.

Currents
Iraq: two top UN officials resign; the privatization of warfare; thousands of homeless forgotten after Orissa’s floods.
PLUS Polyp’s Big Bad World.

Ether Street
Ranting spirit Nil reveals the real brains behind the Russian Revolution.
PLUS NI Crossword.

Worldbeaters
The Sultan of Brunei — how to lose $30 billion.

Mixed media
Books: Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara; Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban; The Heart of the War in Colombia by Constanza Ardila Galvis; The Community Tourism Guide by Mark Mann.
Film/Video: Nuba Conversations by Arthur Howes;Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch.
Music: A Crash Course in Roses by Catie Curtis; Guarapero/Lost Blues 2 by Will Oldham.
PLUS Sharp Focus:Esi Eshun on the invisibility of African cinema.
PLUS Webwatch.

Essay
David Watson finds a plague in all the houses of the new world disorder.

Country Profile – Burkina Faso

 

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