The Rustic Farms Where French Prisoners Wrap Up Their Sentences

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.

Half of U.S. farm workers are Hispanic, but few make it to leadership positions. A historically white non-profit, FFA, is creating equal education programs in California to increase leadership opportunities for minorities in agriculture.

The California prison system is overwhelmed after adopting tough-on-crime laws with no improvement. New York adopted more tolerant policies and has decreased the state's crime rate and its prison population.

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.

To decrease the chance of formerly incarcerated individuals relapsing and ending up back in the prison system, the J.F. Ingram State Technical College in Alabama offers correctional education and vocational programs. This training has aided those incarcerated with life skills for after their release, decreasing the likelihood that they will relapse and increasing the likelihood that they will better adjust to their community.

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.

Prisons in the United States are overcrowded with many non-violent offenders and the cost to keep them in jail consumes public budgets. Criminal justice reform has attracted bipartisan interest with diverse proposals to aid adjust the incarceration rate. The Urban Institute has developed an interactive “prison population forecaster,” which helps citizens to assess the impact of different policies.

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.

A robust population of grizzly bears can be an indicator of healthy land; however, the bears also can destroy grain bins, consume vegetation, and kill livestock. Ranchers work with the Canadian government and local conservation groups to protect their resources with bear-proof grain bins and electric fences.