Brazil's small farmers can now directly supply the country's school meals programs. It's been a big boost for local farmers, and it's helping the schools too.

Some communities are being forced to take steps—sometimes costly ones, like digging deeper wells—to both tap and protect their groundwater.

Fed up with living in the world's most polluted city, some residents are fighting back, on their rooftops and backyards. In 2010, India launched the Jawarharlal Nehru Solar Mission, a government program to deploy 20,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar power in the country, but much of this push for renewable energy has only been focused on rural areas, leading urban residents to take up local control of their energy supplies.

To decrease the nation's food waste, activists in Denmark showed the people that it was safe to buy and consume items that were very recently expired. From live demonstrations where celebrity chef features expired items in the entrees to reducing prices for out-of-date items, "Danes now throw away 25 percent less food than they did five years ago."

In India, many farmers, especially women farmers, have transitioned to organic farming. While it requires a serious set of skills and knowledge, organic farming increases yields and decreases costs by eliminating the need to buy pesticides. The move is both ecological and economical, and the Indian government is trying to spread the solution.

The U.S. federal government rarely requires manufacturers to list the chemicals in consumer goods outside of food. Various states are starting to enact legislation requiring greater transparency.

Prescription drugs are greatly polluting the national water supply, causing researchers to begin looking for a method to better filter water and dispose of unused medicine.

The System of Root Intensification (SRI) method resulted in dramatically high yields from one Indian village. The system centers on a "less is more" approach and results in higher yields—without the use of GMOs. The idea has faced barriers in spreading, as scientists are wary of it, even as villagers embrace the empirically successful approach.

The life-saving vitamin folic acid is added to flour in the United States, but Hispanics tend to eat little flour. Adding folic acid to corn flour would reduce birth defects in Hispanic women in the U.S.

As India's government promotes organic exports, farmers in Punjab have non-economic reasons for avoiding pesticides: Their health.