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And both of us have just decided not to read Yelp reviews any more

That is separate from indigenous farms where hopefully we can all agree they deserve to grow as they see fit.  

*My friends in New England know I study this and many people now are asking me where they can buy. I wish I had an answer! 🙂

This is great information. I have yet to visit Mexico and see first-hand. I would super appreciate more insights about these farms! I’m also trying to find companies that would sell actual shade and agroforestry products (fruits, veggies, herbs, not just coffee) to us common folk in the U.S.. If you have time to chat,…

I do think there are places that intercropped that are free of these diseases and have been for a long time. The topic is too huge to resolve here, but here’s what I know about banana monocultures and solutions: full disclosure, some of this is copied and pasted from my ecology blog.

I am hoping to chat with the lead professor in the spring, I’ll let you know if I do!

I totally get what you’re saying, I would simply add that any article claiming that this problem is dire and then omitting a known solution is, in essence, misleading its readers. (Again, I do not blame the author, but rather a culture of denying the existence of indigenous peoples). Smallhold farmers will indeed…

And it’s also challenging to harvest without all those neat rows. 🙂 Yes indeed, you are right about space. But if you consider the land use of monoculture palm oil alone, those acres used for agroforestry could reverse the damage. Agroforestry creates a small forest - with varying depth of roots, it allows more…

Right, what does that have to do with shade growing? In fact it’s being studied right now whether intercropped, diverse crop systems naturally have lower incidence of disease (including but not limited to fungal) due to competitiveness among increased (non-harmful) fungal species, even without resistant genotypes.…

This is fake news! (I’m serious). (Nothing against you, Whitney. Many sources ignore the following). Master’s in Environmental Studies here. First of all, we’ve known since ancient times that shade growing and agroforestry is about ten times better for cacao and the planet than monoculture growing. If the world would…

Nobody pulling in $816,000/year is budgeting only $125/week for food

I know, right? (Typo on my part).

I meant PER YEAR. 🙄 Sorry.

I love series like this, however the family of 7 in the original article had an income of $68,000 per month not including the wife’s seasonal pay. That’s not exactly what I call “on a budget”. They spent $125 per week on groceries. I wonder what lower income families spend per week with a family of 7. Can truly lower…

What a lovely read! Thank you for pointing that out. ❤️🌸 We can be rabidly opposed to 45 but that doesn’t mean we need to be dicks to individuals. In fact my neighbors are both mindlessly right wing, but they’ve always been there when we needed their help.

“Freezing” doesn’t begin to describe it. The NWS forecast says “Snowy, 16° F” for Saturday, then the forecast for Sunday says, “Cold”.

Crying babies are horrible, but I find parents will sometimes bring them outside and / or they stop crying. Far worse are 7 and 8 year olds who kick the seats, run around, yell and jump around in their seats. It only takes one of these families to ruin a movie (or dinner)! for everyone. These are the worse parents…

Well, I have all sorts of preferences and financial limitations but I used to love going to the movies so I only request one thing: Ushers. Good ones. Kids kicking my seats, yelling or running, or any adults making noise (or kicking my seat - seriously, how fucking old are you)? need to be tossed the fuck out. It’s so…

After a year of employment with the MSPCA under an excellent manager, the MSPCA decided she and her staff needed to go - so they fired her and put in a new, viscous manager who drove 6 employees to quit in the span of 3 weeks. I refused to cave in - so the manager literally tore up the euthanasia schedule and put me…