Articles
Charlotte-Mecklenburg high schools have some of the region’s highest graduation rates. They also have some of the lowest. A look at recently released public high school graduation rates for North Carolina shows a wide disparity in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Yet CMS as a whole, compared to other systems in the region, has the lowest overall graduation […]
Despite recent rains, the Uwharries have experienced abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions for much of the summer. This isn’t unusual for our region. According to the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council, our conditions ranged from abnormally dry to extreme drought in four of the past five summers. Days in the upper 90s and weeks […]
Over the past four decades, North Carolina has grown from a state of 5.08 million to 9.54 million people. Along with that near-doubling in population has come a decisive shift in the state’s societal landscape. Once a spread-out state of small farms, small factories and small cities and towns, it is increasingly defined and driven […]
I’ve spent many hours in the last few years working on behalf of Charlotte-area farms and farmers, trying to help build and nurture a community-based food system and experimenting with new ways to distribute food from local farms to customers. But this summer my focus shifted from farmers in the fields to customers in the […]
Just for fun, before watching Monday night’s Charlotte City Council hearing on the newest plan for downtown Charlotte, I hauled out my yellowing copy of the 1966 Odell Plan. (See original drawings from the plan here.) It’s both fun and humbling to see how stunningly wrong that plan was about so much. Then I thumbed […]
Have you wondered whether bees in our area are suffering from colony collapse disorder? Do you know what fly fishing’s aquatic insects can tell us about water quality? Entomologists (insect scientists) are no longer the only people watching bugs. Like many branches of natural science, entomology has reached out to citizen scientists for help in […]
Charlotte’s draft 2020 Vision Plan is a disappointing document. Despite the hard work, the glossy graphics are mostly pretty pictures of conventional thinking rather than visions for a different future. A plan promoted as visionary should acknowledge that urgent environmental and economic forces demand challenging changes to the status quo, and then propose far-reaching and […]
A peach display in the grocery store might mention where the fruit was grown. Too often, that means Georgia or California. At a farm stand in the Sandhills, the peaches come from an orchard right here on the edge of the Uwharries. Growers even note the specific variety. After writing about the Ophir apple last […]
In 2010, a UNC Charlotte research team led by Dr. Elizabeth Racine conducted a Mecklenburg County Community Food Assessment for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Food Policy Council. The results of Phase 1 of that study (posted on this website in September 2010) looked at the presence or absence of food stores in Mecklenburg’s Census Block Groups […]
Last week while surveying one of our properties, a natural heritage field biologist found an interesting species never before documented this far south – the eastern gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor). The gray tree frog found widely across the state is the Cope’s gray tree frog (Hyla chrysoscelis). The eastern gray tree frog was documented […]
In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were in London to negotiate a trade deal and follow up on unfulfilled terms of the peace treaty reached at the end of the Revolutionary War. When talks bogged down, they took a break to visit the English countryside. Despite their animosity toward their former enemy, they were […]
Fruits and vegetables that taste like summer—tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, blueberries, raspberries, melons—are swelling and ripening in gardens and farms of our region. These crops would be far less abundant without the buzzing chorus of pollinating insects that provide their services for free. Commercial honey bee and bumble bee operations make good use of the industrious […]