【推荐2】How To Eat Better for the Planet

You're environmentally conscious - and hungry. Here are answers to all your coo-friendly food questions.

Does what I eat have an effect on climate change?

Yes. The world's food system is responsible for about one quarter of the planet-warming greenhouse gases that humans generate each year. That includes raising and harvesting all the plants, animals, and animal products we eat.     1    

How exactly does food contribute to global warming?

When some forests are cleared to make room for farms, cattle, sheep or other livestock, some serious problems may come up.     2     Also, fossil fuels are used to operate farm machinery, make fertilizer, and ship food around the globe, all of which generate emissions.

What about chicken?

A number of studies have found that chickens, ducks, and other birds have a lesser climate impact than cattle or sheep kept on a farm.     3     Especially at converting feeding materials into animal meat, the efficiency is highly improved, though this has prompted major concerns about animal welfare.

Is organic produce better for the climate?

Organic produce is grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily better than conventionally grown produce from a climate perspective.     4     In some cases it can be worse.

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It's true that one person alone just makes a little bit in the climate problem. On the other hand, if many people made changes to their diets, that could start to add up. Experts have argued that it would make a big difference if the world's heaviest meat eaters scaled back - even moderately.

【推荐1】Nasr Majid started hunting this fall at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (保护区) on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in USA. He’s one of the relatively few new hunters who officials hope will help stop a nearly four-decade decline nationally in what has become a hobby for fewer than 5 percent of Americans.

Natural resources and wildlife officials in Maryland are encouraging hunting of deer, turkeys and some other wild animals, which is believed to be good for the environment. Without hunting, they say, sika deer will overpopulate the wildlife refuge and they’ll overeat the bushes and other plants that provide important habitat for birds. On the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, hunting is also important to prevent the spread of diseases such as Lyme.

In many families, the hunting tradition has been handed down for generations. But as longtime sportsmen age and children lose interest, the number of hunters in the United States fell by 2 million, from 2011 to 2018, to about 11 million.

“Everything is changing. Kids are growing up in front of video games and computers instead of going hunting.” said Chris Markin, a hunting specialist for the state natural resources department. “Adults usually focus on working and providing for their families. Those pressures are preventing many other potential hunters from going out, and from raising the next generation of hunters.”

To avoid such a decline, a new approach is needed. Government agencies and nonprofit groups are now launching mentoring (指导) programs to train more hunters, which not only helps preserve an industry and a culture but also means more protection for wildlife and their habitats through deer population control and investment.

Luckily, there are those still eager to learn, like Majid. He was just looking for an outdoor hobby he could share with his children when he came across the mentorship program. Now, he feels capable of hunting on his own, but also has someone he can text with questions that pop up. His new pastime has already paid off for him—on his second hunt with his mentor, in the last minutes of daylight, he bagged his first deer.

【推荐3】The Miao Sisters Festival is held every year in Guizhou’s Taijiang County, where 97 percent of the 168,000 people there are from the ethnic (民族) Miao group.It is an ancient tradition, which brings men and women together through food, gifts and music.

In the days before the festival, young women gather leaves and wild flowers, which they use to dye (给……染色) sticky rice with bright colours. This brightly coloured rice, known as Sister Rice, gives the festival its name. During the festival, the young women dress in beautiful traditional clothes with large amounts of silver jewelry.

The festival includes parades, horse races and musical performances. But the real focus is the interaction between the young women and the young men who visit from surrounding villages and sing songs.In one traditional type of song, a man and woman take turns singing to each other, and the first one to make a mistake loses the game.The loser must give the winner a gift, but the winner is expected to give a gift in return too.

After meeting the men, the women send them home with a bamboo basket containing dyed rice and hidden objects with special meanings. For example, a pair of chopsticks means she wants to marry the man, while garlic shows that she is not interested.

One of several stories is about the festival’s beginning of a girl and a boy who fell in love. The girl’s parents wanted her to marry her uncle’s son as it was traditional at the time. She refused, and the boy likewise refused to marry anyone else. For a time, they could only meet in a field and pass hidden messages to each other through rice in a bamboo basket. Finally, the pair overcame their parents’ opposition and were allowed to marry.

The Miao Sisters Festival is perhaps the oldest festival in Asia that encourages love.