Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It's a common charge -- and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture's greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement's supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M -- that factory for future big-ag farmers and execs -- the octogenarian fulminated against "anti-technology critics [who] argue that humankind is being poisoned by modern high-yield agriculture and should return to traditional organic methods." The great man went on: "These anti-science and -technology zealots are trying to retard -- and even stop …

With Whole Foods continuing to dazzle Wall Street with its growth and Wal-Mart vowing to become the world's No. 1 organic grocer, now would seem to be a wonderful time to be an organic farmer -- particularly one with enough acreage to supply the corporate giants. According to classical economics, when demand jumps, supply should follow, pulled up by the good's rising price. But a funny thing is happening in the certified-organic fields and orchards of California, home to about 40 percent of the nation's organic-vegetable acreage: produce is shriveling unpicked on the vine, choked by weeds and neglect. Ripe …

U.S. commercial rice crop contaminated with GM strain The U.S. government admitted last week that its commercial supply of long-grain rice has been contaminated by an illegal, untested, genetically modified strain with the warm-and-fuzzy name of LLRICE 601. The European Union, the biggest importer of U.S. long-grain rice, may decide to delay or ban imports; Japan, which buys very little U.S. long-grain rice, will now be buying none. LLRICE 601, engineered by German biotech company Bayer CropScience to withstand an herbicide, has not been approved for human consumption. U.S. rice supplies from the 2005 harvest were contaminated, even though field …

Hemp farming could be legalized in California Farmers could legally grow industrial hemp under a bill approved by the state Senate of, obviously, California. But isn't hemp, like, totally marijuana? Didn't Nancy Reagan warn us about this? No, no, says (Republican!) state Sen. Tom McClintock, in the best analogy we've ever heard: Hemp "bears no more resemblance to marijuana than a poodle bears to a wolf." The legislation would require that hemp be tested before harvesting to make sure it has only a trace amount of THC, the intoxicant in marijuana. Hemp-growing is illegal in the U.S., for all kinds …

The local-food movement has reached an interesting juncture. Through one lens, things are looking better than ever. According to a USDA report (PDF), the number of farmers' markets leapt 79 percent to 3,100 between 1994 and 2002. Community-supported agriculture programs -- wherein consumers buy a share of a farm's output before the season starts, sharing the risks and rewards of the harvest -- have followed a similar trajectory. According to one source, North America boasts 1,200 CSAs. Just 25 years ago, the concept didn't exist in these parts. Tastes great, less shipping. Photo: iStockphoto All that growth aside, though, the …

The Times reports: INDIA'S highest court yesterday demanded that Coca-Cola should reveal its secret formula for the first time in 120 years. Why? The Supreme Court ordered the US soft drinks maker, along with its rival PepsiCo, to supply details of the chemical composition and ingredients of their products after a study released this week claimed that they contained unacceptable levels of insecticides. [emphasis added] ... The court order followed the release of a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-government body, which contended that 11 brands sold by the two soft drinks makers contained high levels …

Farmers markets may be fashionable, but the U.S. appetite for convenience food remains insatiable. "Retail sales of frozen foods in the U.S. in 2005 reached a record $29 billion, up from nearly $26 billion in 2001," declares a news report. Meanwhile, the U.S. food-processing giants are shuttering domestic plants and heading to Mexico and China, where labor and produce costs are cheaper than California's central coast, once the U.S. frozen food capital. In an age of broad energy and climate uncertainty, market forces are conspiring to make our food system ever more energy intensive. How can this be? How can …

Hummer propaganda aimed at kids through McDonald's Happy Meals Sometimes a story comes along that so perfectly captures a culture's pathologies that it should be put in a time capsule, so future generations ... oh, right, there won't be any future generations. It seems that, according to fast-food behemoth McDonald's, this is a "Hummer of a Summer." A new series of TV and radio ads depict happy families on their way to fatten their children and clog their arteries at McDonald's in GM's gas-guzzling Hummer. When they arrive, soon-to-be-obese boys can choose from eight different toy Hummers with their Happy …

Harvesting a bit of vintage Reagan-era rhetoric, L.A. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg recently denounced what he called "welfare queens on tractors." The right-winger's target was clear: The U.S. farm subsidy program, which doles out around $14.5 billion per year (depending on market fluctuations), mainly to large producers of corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans, and rice. As Congress opens debate on the 2007 Farm Bill -- the omnibus five-year legislation that governs agricultural support -- the subsidy program has drawn a chorus of critics. Goldberg gets it about right when he lists the program's opponents: "Right-wing economists, left-wing environmentalists and almost anybody …

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek once remarked that the United States does still have a working class -- it's simply in China. With the U.S. manufacturing base shriveling (Ford Explorer, anyone?) and imports from China booming (set to surpass a quarter trillion dollars this year), it's hard to contradict that trendy Slovenian academic. China's manufacturing miracle means (among many other things) that even in a period of stagnant wage growth, U.S. consumers can march into Wal-Mart and fill their carts with lots and lots of stuff. The most famous environmental impact of China's boom has to do with crude oil: As …