One of the most encouraging things about the sustainable-food movement is how effortlessly it crosses traditional political-party, religious, ethnic, and other lines. The right to good, clean, and fair food, to borrow Slow Food's shorthand, seems to unite people who'd never otherwise find themselves chatting at the same party: Home schoolers and dreadlocked hippies, libertarian DIYers and heartland moms. Claire Hope Cummings. Photo: Bart Nagel But there are little pockets of polarization where brawls can break out. One of them is the so-called elitism of such food. The biggest hot-button issue by far, though, is that of transgenic crops. The …

Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a "state of nature" as "nasty, brutish, and short." The U.S. meat industry appears to have taken Hobbes' statement as a prescription for proper animal husbandry. Every year, millions of farm animals are slaughtered without ever knowing anything besides life in a grim, crowded cage. Many are subjected to painful mutilation, as in the case of "tail docking." In a sense, cows may have it worst of all. They typically spend the first six months outdoors, munching the pasture they evolved to eat. It must be a shock when they're loaded into trucks and …

Remember a few weeks ago, when The Guardian leaked word of a "secret" World Bank report that essentially blames U.S. and (to a lesser extent) E.U. biofuel policies for causing the global food crisis? You know, the food crisis that continues to generate excoriating hunger in the global south? Well, the World Bank quietly released a modified version of the report this week. Actually, The Guardian posted the original bootleg version, dated April 8, a week after its scoop; I missed it at the time. Well, now I've read both versions, which are substantially the same (the new version has …

Monday's New York Times had a great opinion piece about My Farm's Trevor Paque -- the same guy recently profiled in the Times' Style section. In fact, I had to look twice to make sure it was the same T. Paque because the two articles emphasized such different aspects of the urban CSA mission. Kim Severson, in the style piece, describes it thus: Call them the lazy locavores -- city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner …

Jamie Bissonnette. In my most recent article, I described my experience attending a hog-butchering workshop led by Boston chef Jamie Bissonnette. He mentioned during the workshop that he had been a vegan when he was younger. I wanted to find out more about what would make someone change his eating habits so dramatically, so I set up an interview with Jamie to talk about the influences and experiences that led him to follow a different path than the one he set out on as a young man. After settling into a comfortable seating area near the bar at KO Prime, …

I am always a sucker for a catchy sounding report -- like the one the World Business Council for Sustainable Development released last week: "Agricultural Ecosystems: Facts and Trends." It had it all: the noble sounding "Council," the association between agriculture and ecosystems, and the appeal to my inner science-geek with words like "facts" and "trends." I printed it out enthusiastically and got out my highlighter, ready to read all of the fascinating new insights into agriculture, food, and the environment. I was intrigued by the beginning section on consumer patterns which detailed the increased demand for meat in developing …

I have no idea what this ad means. But I saw it in Newsweek and had to scan it onto the blog: I am open to anyone's thoughts as to what this means. Here is the best I can come up with: (In the interest of maintaining the journalistic integrity of this blog, such as it is, I must admit in my youthful days, I did eat Grape-Nuts [with yogurt]). First, I believe this ad is, in fact, sort of a warning that accepts the science of human caused global warming. I can't see any other explanation for the text, …

The agricultural industry is one of the biggest users of water, energy, and chemicals on the planet. Overall it poses one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity, which is why it deserves significant attention from the environmental community. But when it comes to defining what is meant by "sustainable agriculture," there is a lot of confusion. Many people think "organic," or "local," or "non-GMO," or even "biodynamic." It will come as little surprise that economists don't think of the issue in this way; they primarily examine the basic conditions for the efficient use of resources in the agricultural sector. …

In "Dispatches From the Fields," Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape.   It's somewhat astonishing that there's a thriving local food scene where I live, in Montezuma County, Colorado. Not because the area is poor, rural, and thus removed from the trendiness of the local food movement that has hit most large population centers -- rather, because it's so difficult to grow food here.   In a normal year, towns in Montezuma County get between …

I've been a pretty harsh critic of industrial agriculture for a while. I've also been known to utter unkind words about the government's extraordinary, multibillion-dollar effort to promote ethanol. But I've changed my mind. I now believe chemical-dependent, monocrop agriculture can be counted on to not only "feed the world," but also keep its hundreds of millions of cars on the road -- now and forever. What turned me around? This news: Archer Daniels Midland Co., DuPont Co., John Deere, Monsanto, and the Renewable Fuels Association have banded together to launch the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy. And guess …