The Push to Turn Church Land Into Farmland

Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) brings together college students from different faiths so that they develop respect and appreciation for each other and different traditions. IFYC also cultivates interfaith leaders and organizes campus-based campaigns called Better Together. Some students have received push back from their faith communities, but students and faculty have reported the campaigns for interfaith engagement leads to positive outcomes of increasing tolerance on campuses. The organization has trained students who have run campaigns on 106 campuses.

Most insurance companies avoid insuring poor farmers because the transaction costs are too high, but a non-profit in Kenya created a sustainable way to cover them.

Farmers in Vietnam face rising sea levels but rejected the city's water engineering projects. They prefer gradual measures to cope with climate change so scientists have allowed the farmers to steer the conversation.

Louisiana and Vietnam both need affordable solutions to rising sea levels. Leaders from Vietnam visited Louisiana to compare ideas.

In prison, most inmates are alienated from social practices and can be a tax burden for the states. The Colorado Correctional Industries is a program that positions inmates in different forms of labor such as making stuffed toys, farming fish, picking fruit, tending livestock, and creating crafts to be sold at grocery stores. The program makes inmates into taxpayers instead of tax burdens and offers skills that are useful for future employment once they leave prison.

In Colombia, traditional cattle pastures have caused soil degradation, deforestation, and desertification. To reconcile this, several thousand acres of land in Latin America have been transformed into a silvo-pastoral system of grazing and raising cattle with agro-forestry. The Colombia-based Center for Research in Sustainable Systems of Agriculture seeks to reduce pasture land by 26 million acres while increasing cattle numbers by 2019.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.

Officials in Niger are addressing chronic severe droughts causing food shortages and leading to a widespread threat of starvation. They provide aid to malnourished children and resources for a crop planting technique called 're-greening,' which aims to reforest agricultural regions, restore soil quality and, in turn, increase food supply.

Soil in Bangladesh is becoming increasingly saline and infertile due to climate change. Bangladeshi farmers have begun using a saline-tolerant rice seed in order to produce an abundant crop despite salty soil.

The non-profit Root Capital created a lending initiative in Mexico which helps mid-size rural farmers gain access to capital, skills, and consumer markets from which they would otherwise be excluded.