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 …

Of all the environmental gaffes the species homo sapien commits in the process of feeding itself, the practice of cramming megafauna into huge pens and plying them with corn may rank as the most imbecilic. The excellent web site Eat Wild documents the environmental ills of confinement dairy and meat production; here are a few. Cows evolved to eat prairie grass, not grain, which makes them sick. Huge concentrations of large ravenous animals create huge concentrations of shit -- which is a critical resource for maintaining soil health in reasonable amounts, but a fetid nightmare when produced at mountainous levels. …

When Elena Ortiz found a job on an organic raspberry farm after working for nine years in conventionally farmed fields, she was glad for the change. The best part about her new job was that she no longer had to work just feet away from tractors spraying chemical herbicides and pesticides. An added bonus was the fruit itself -- "prettier," she said, and firmer, which made it easier to pick. Better living without chemicals? Photos: iStockphoto But when it came to how Ortiz was treated by her employers, little was different. Her pay remained meager: $500 a week at peak …

Cargill pushes soy farming that's obliterating the Amazon Soy production has overtaken logging and cattle ranching as the main source of Amazon rainforest destruction. In the past three years, nearly 27,000 square miles of the Amazon have been destroyed, nearly three-quarters of it illegally. Much of the acreage was sold to soy producers, financed in large part by agribusiness giant Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the world. Brazil has become the world's leading exporter of soy; last year, the country produced more than 50 million tons of the protein-rich bean from an area approximately the size of the …

Quick: Where can you eat vegan doughnuts for breakfast, vegetarian Chinese for lunch, and 13-bean soup for an afternoon snack? Hint: In the same city, you can feast on sustainable fish for dinner, prepared by one of the country's celebrity chefs, and Kind Apple Cobbler for dessert -- the "raw" version. New York? Maybe. Seattle? Probably. Las Vegas? Definitely. Surprised? The locals aren't. Green? You bet your life. All-night buffets and free cocktails are Vegas' usual claim to culinary fame, but their notoriety has overshadowed long-established, healthier outposts: a pick-your-own orchard, a natural-foods store, a vegan doughnut shop. Now a …

With demand for organic milk soaring, the stakes are high in the debate over what exactly "organic milk" is -- and that debate will soon be settled, at least from a legal standpoint, by the USDA's National Organic Program. As Samuel Fromartz writes in The Rocky Mountain News, the NOP is now considering a proposed regulation that would require all organic dairy farms to meet a certain standard for letting their cows out into pasture. Current USDA regulations only require that organic cows have "access to pasture," which, says Fromartz, "is akin to requiring a gym membership without mandating regular …

Ethanol ain't all it's cracked up to be, new study says A new study casts serious doubt on ethanol's status as a green wonder-fuel. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers lay out a series of grim findings about corn-based biofuel. Runoff from large-scale corn cultivation contaminates waterways with nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticides. As a motor fuel, corn-based ethanol generates just 23 percent more energy than is required to make it. And finally, corny ethanol reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by a slim 12 percent over gasoline. The study found that soybean biodiesel outperforms the corny stuff, but that …