Dear Umbra, I recently saw "organic canola oil" on a salad dressing bottle. I looked up the origin of canola oil, and it looks like it is a genetic modification of rapeseed. I thought organic certification disallowed genetically modified foods. What's the scoop? Tom Grundy Nevada City, Calif. Dearest Tom, Have you noticed yet that May is food month here on floor 2B? Food and plants, in honor of spring -- and to counter last month's depressing climate-change bonanza. (Although it's been yet another weird, hot spring in purportedly rainy Seattle, and all the gardeners are irrigating already -- maybe …

Attention female vegans (and no, I'm not soliciting romance, thanks): If you're dreaming of birthing twins, you may want to read this. Women who eat a vegan diet -- a strict vegetarian diet that excludes all animal products including milk -- are one-fifth as likely as other women to have twins, a U.S. researcher reported on Saturday. But despite what some headline-writers suggest ("Vegan diet lowers odds of having twins" and "Meat-Eaters More Likely to Have Twins?"), neither meat-eating nor even necessarily veganness seem to be the key. The reason [for the vegan twin-birth difference] may be hormones given to …

Over at Daryl Hannah's vlog, dh love life, she's posted an "emergency episode" about the plight of the South Central Farm that Dave blogged about recently. Watch it now. (Damn, those fruits and veggies look good!)

Dear Umbra, How come it's so expensive to go organic? I could swing it by myself by eating a bare minimum of food, but I'm charged with feeding consume-mass-quantity types who favor the traditional American diet, and they eat meat. I would be in debt buying just half the monthly food consumption. One would have to be rich to go organic. MonikkaMarie Jackson Queen Village, N.Y. Dearest MonikkaMarie, The usual answer to your question from organic proponents is: organic isn't expensive, conventional is unrealistically cheap. Not that helpful, but it's true. It doesn't make cents. Photo: iStockphoto. In the United …

This essay was adapted from the book Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew. A couple of years ago, I visited an organic vegetable farm in southeast Minnesota, not far from the Mississippi River. Nestled in a valley that sloped down from rolling pasture and cropland sat Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, a 40-acre farm. Do your stem sell research. Photo: iStockphoto. Featherstone was part of a local food web in the upper Midwest, selling at a farmers market, through a CSA (community-supported agriculture), and to co-op stores in the Twin Cities. But the partners, Jack Hedin and Rhys Williams, …

Organic farming creates more jobs, U.K. study finds Organic agriculture has traditionally been linked to health and environmental benefits. Now it can add job creation to its portfolio: A study of nearly 1,200 farms in the United Kingdom and Ireland found that organic farming creates on average 32 percent more jobs than conventional agriculture. The U.K.'s agricultural workforce has declined 79 percent since 1952. But the Soil Association, Britain's organic certification body, notes that if the nation were to convert all of its farms to organic, it would create an additional 93,000 farm jobs. Currently only 4 percent of Brit …

If you haven't been following the discussion under this post about Wal-Mart selling organic food, I recommend you catch up. It's quite insightful, with a range of views well-expressed. One note of consensus seems to be this: "Organic," at least as denoted by the USDA label, falls well short of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Tom is better qualified than I to give a comprehensive description of the latter, but one important element is locality. Food that is grown, sold, and eaten within a single regional foodshed is closer to sustainable than organic mega-farms. So, as a couple of people have suggested, …

When Wal-Mart announced plans to become the world's biggest purveyor of organically grown food last week, the polite applause from the enviro gallery grated on my ears. (Here's a spirited recent debate on Gristmill.) Even the New York Times editorial page could see through this move. While some greens cooed at at Wal-Mart's magnamity, the Grey Lady unleashed an appropriately cynical analysis: There is no chance that Wal-Mart will be buying from small, local organic farmers. Instead, its market influence will speed up the rate at which organic farming comes to resemble conventional farming in scale, mechanization, processing and transportation. …

California loses suit to make tuna companies issue mercury warnings California law requires products containing chemicals that could cause reproductive harm or cancer to have warning labels, but a state Superior Court judge has ruled that the law does not apply to mercury-licious canned tuna. Mercury has been shown to slow neurological development, thus the FDA advises pregnant women and children to limit fish consumption. But the judge's ruling states that California law is preempted by an FDA advisory available on the internet (easily accessible to those browsing the web while grocery shopping!), that mercury levels were not high enough …

Melanie Warner at the NYT reports today that Wal-Mart is about to dramatically increase its organic food offerings. In very understated fashion, she says, "Wal-Mart's interest is expected to change organic food production in substantial ways." Um, yeah, it sure will. Wal-Mart's plan is to sell organics ~10% over the price of non-organics -- a much closer premium than you can get elsewhere. It's also getting brands like Pepsi, Rice Krispies, and Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese in the game. There's good back and forth in the article about the pros and cons of further industrializing organics -- availability and expansion …