OneWorld.net's take: A few years ago, Joanna and Alex Livieratos traded in their city lifestyle for a greener alternative. Here, Joanna discusses the new eco-friendly online retail business they run from their family farm and the adjustments they've made to promote environmentally sustainable living.

Livieratos at her Michigan farm. © Co-op America

• Green businesses are springing up across the United States. The alternative fuel gas station, BioFuel Oasis, sells the highest quality biofuel in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it also has a small store that sells healthy snacks and sustainable living supplies. In an interview with Co-op America, Margaret Farrow, one of the worker-owners of BioFuel Oasis, explains how biodiesel helps preserve the environment and what

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WASHINGTON, Jun 13 (OneWorld) - As food prices and hunger continue to rise worldwide, small farmers in Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico are suggesting solutions quite different than the free trade policies endorsed at a recent UN food summit in Rome.

Ensuring "food sovereignty" and locally sustainable forms of agriculture, they say, would strengthen local communities and help stem the global food crisis.

Both Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination and Brazil's Small Producers Movement have "put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy food," reported Grassroots International, an organization that supports community-led sustainable development projects.

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WASHINGTON, May 22 (OneWorld) - The $300 billion U.S. Farm Bill, which is expected to be passed into law despite this week's veto by President George W. Bush, is getting high marks from advocates of U.S. food and nutrition programs but was blasted by those concerned about the global poor and giveaways to the already rich.

The legislation that sets laws and spending guidelines for a range of nutritional and agricultural programs doesn't usually attract much public notice when it comes up for reauthorization every five years.

A small dairy farm in western Maryland. © Scott Bauer / U.S. Dept. of Agriculture

This year, however, may be different. Congress passed the bill with a bipartisan majority big enough to reverse Wednesday's veto by President Bush -- marking only the second time

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|Rahman Shaq and his wife Anowara Begam. © Siraj / Machizo|
DHAKA, Apr 16 (OneWorld) - Although illiterate Bangladeshi villagers don't know the climate change lingo, many have shown an awareness of the situation, using local knowledge to innovate and adapt to the natural changes.

Constant fighting with poverty and floods are a common reality of grassroots Bangladesh. Along with development challenges, preparing for and adapting to climate changes has been added to the burden of the rural poor.

The people of Vobodaho and Kashoppur in the Jessore district of southwest Bangladesh are continuously striving to deal with changes to their surroundings. Since 1960, the region's nature has been affected by aggressive man-made changes, which have led to high salinity levels and arsenic pollution

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Every year, OneWorld invites the global community to nominate and elect the organization or individual that made the biggest impact on international human rights or development. In 2007, the nominees for OneWorld's Person of the Year include Vandana Shiva, the renowned grassroots environmental activist.

© Elya (Wikimedia Commons)

For over three decades, Dr. Vandana Shiva has been tirelessly promoting the ideals of sustainability and protecting the rights of women, farmers, and others marginalized by modern society.

Shiva is perhaps best known for her efforts to promote organic, community-based farming, particularly in the Indian countryside, where corporate-driven farming methods have caused such severe declines in income for so many family farmers that more than 150,000 have committed

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