Environment
Skoll Award Recipients Focus on Ecosystem Services Market
Three of the seven recipients of this year’s awards were from the field of ecosystem services and avoided deforestation.
Tag: Agriculture
Innovations in farming and agronomy that promote sustainability and advance social good
Podcast
Food
Paul Rice - Promoting Fair Trade as Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship may be the most promising avenue for solving global problems, says Paul Rice, CEO of TransFair USA. In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Rice details his own work to establish Fair Trade. The movement has opened the U.S. market to more than 1.4 million small family farmers around the world who are now getting a fair price for their harvests and making dramatic gains in their living standards.
Podcast
Food
Panel Discussion - Strategies to End Hunger
A food crisis is upon us. Prices are rising, supply is shrinking, and petroleum prices are spiking, all leading to increasing demand and instability regarding food in countries the world over. In this panel discussion, Robert Hormats, Helene Gayle, and Jacqueline Novogratz discuss what the financial sector, NGOs, and small farmers must do to reverse this alarming situation.
Podcast
Economic Development
David Funkhouser - TransFair’s Work in Fair Trade
Coffee price fluctuations over past decades have created extreme financial crises and long-term poverty for thousands of small-scale Latin American farmers. In this Stanford Center for Social Innovation sponsored audio lecture, David Funkhouser of TransFair USA, details how the Fair Trade movement arose as a market-based approach to poverty alleviation and international development. He discusses Fair Trade's function to offer suppliers fair, above-market prices, and TransFair's role in supporting that movement.
Podcast
Food
Marion Nestle - Making Good Eating Choices
The question of what to eat to be healthy has spawned a rash of often contradictory advice by "experts." In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Ethics and Society Program, NYU professor and author Marion Nestle offers simple advice that cuts through the confusion. She highlights the difference between "nutrients" and "food," and suggests how to bring "nutrition" back into the food realm. Her discussion forays into how agriculture and business interact to produce the foodstuffs on our shelves.
Food
Fast Food and the Family Farm
It’s time to reform how we grow food and what we have for dinner, says Bruce Boyd, principal and managing director at Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors.
Podcast
Business
Making Supply Chains Socially Responsible - Promoting Sustainability in the Coffee Industry
Starbucks has developed guidelines for creating and maintaining a sustainable supply chain, which it calls Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices. These coffee-buying guidelines help the company establish equitable relationships with farmers, workers, and communities. In this audio lecture recorded at Stanford during the 2007 Responsible Supply Chains Conference, Willard Hay explores what's making C.A.F.E. Practices successful.
Podcast
Scaling
Fazle H. Abed - Thinking Big and Scaling Up
Solving the world's big problems takes large-scale solutions, says Fazle H. Abed, founder of Building Resources Across Communities in Bangladesh. In this audio lecture, Abed outlines the development and market perspectives that have enabled his organization to expand and meet his country's needs in key areas, including microfinance, agriculture, and education.
Podcast
Food
John Mackey & Michael Pollan - The Past, Present, and Future of Food
In this audio lecture, Michael Pollan and John Mackey take their year-long blog discussion live in front of an audience of Berkeley foodies. In response to Pollan's critiques of Whole Foods' practices, Mackey describes some of agriculture's less savory practices, lays out his vision for a more sustainable and humane food system, and unveils Whole Foods' new consumer-education initiatives.
Podcast
Social Enterprise
John Sage - Social Enterprise, Fair Trade and Coffee
Combining idealism with a genuine love of business, John Sage cofounded the social enterprise company Pura Vida, one of the largest distributors of fair trade organic coffee in the world. In this University podcast, he discusses his mission to improve the lives of people in coffee-growing regions. Sage explains how Pura Vida works at the intersection of the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, showing how the two can be blended to generate both revenues and social good.