Recently, I've come across two articles that pungently demonstrate the place of small-scale farmers in a global economy geared toward long-distance trade. The first, a Salon-published excerpt from Charles Fishman's recent book The Wal-Mart Effect, explores what the U.S. love affair with $5/pound salmon means for Chile. (Prepare to click through a few ads to get to the story.) The other, a NY Times piece, depicts high-level hand-wringing in China over rural "land grabs by officials eager to cash in on China's booming economy." (Thanks to Tyler Bell for alerting me to the Salon piece.)In Wal-Mart fish cases across the …

Even though I abandoned Brooklyn for the Appalachians, I'm no sentimental pastoralist. I'm a long-term disciple of the great urban theorist (and champion of cities) Jane Jacobs. Human history since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago has been a history of cities. Cities are the future; as David Owen's superb article "Green Manhattan" (PDF) shows, they may be our only hope. The trick is to create agricultural systems within and just outside of cities, minimizing the ruinous effects of long-haul freight transit, slashing the fossil-fuel inputs embedded in food production, maximizing availability of fresh delicious food, and boosting local …

Dairy farmer earns bucks from herd's manure Alert readers will note that we never pass up a chance to talk about cow poop. But cow poop that generates power? Pinch us! Minnesota dairy farmer Dennis Haubenschild uses an anaerobic digester to convert the methane-generating dookie of his 900-cow herd into electricity for a local utility, earning thousands of dollars a year while cutting his operation's greenhouse-gas emissions. (Heh, we said "emissions.") A carbon broker measures and verifies the reduction of almost 100 tons of carbon equivalent a week and sells it as greenhouse-gas credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange, North …

Long a staple of industrial food processors, partially hydrogenated oils are widely known to have health-ruining effects. After decades of looking the other way as study after study emerged documenting this phenomenon, the FDA is finally making moves to at least encourage consumers to avoid them. The industry is already retrenching, removing the vile stuff from popular junk-food products, often heralded by a "0 Grams Trans Fat" label on the package. Restaurant chains such as McDonalds' own Chipotle Grill have followed suit. Archer-Daniels Midland and Monsanto have even forged an evil alliance to market a genetically altered, trans-fat-free soybean oil …

GM crops advance on the world's arable acreage Genetically modified crops are taking over the world. [Evil laugh here.] The acreage devoted to biotech crops jumped 11 percent last year. Biotech varieties of rice -- the world's most important food crop -- are poised to take off in China, a development that would put GM crops into the hands of tens of millions of small farmers who grow nearly half the calories eaten by the human race. Acres devoted to GM crops still cover a small percentage of the world's total arable land, but they've been growing fast -- from …

This post first appeared on Bitter Greens Journal. Maverick Farms, where I work, lies on a dirt road halfway up a steep hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Twenty years ago all the land around here was agricultural. Each family generally had a couple of milk cows, a pig or two, and a garden plot to feed themselves; for cash, they planted cabbage (to be sold to a nearby sauerkraut factory, long gone) and tobacco. All of that has changed. The word "farm" has become a marketing tool to move real estate, and little else. The only other entity with …

Over the past 20 years, Joel Salatin has emerged as a sort of guru of the sustainable-food movement. His 500-acre Polyface Farm in Swoope, Va., is legendary among a small circle of foodies for its robustly flavored beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. Among farmers, Salatin has won cult status for his innovations in multi-species, pasture-based animal husbandry. But readers of his new book, Holy Cows & Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food, won't be quite as impressed. Good moos. Photo: iStockphoto. Styled as a how-to guide for consumers, the book strives to "inform you, the food …

In a nation riddled with diet-related maladies like obesity and diabetes, the official fear that greets raw milk is impressive. You can waltz into any convenience store and snap up foods pumped liberally with government-subsidized high-fructose corn sweetener, deep-fried in government-subsidized partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Yet in many states, teams of bureaucrats devote themselves to "protecting" us from raw milk -- and imposing onerous fines on farmers who dare sell it. Some states ban raw milk outright; others have erected elaborate barriers between farmer and consumer. Here in North Carolina, for example, I have to pretend I'm buying animal fodder …

Of all the crimes against nature Thanksgiving inspires -- SUVs clogging the highways, planes shuttling fliers around the country, factory farms churning out millions of frozen turkeys -- the most grievous may be culinary. First, the above-mentioned turkeys typically taste like sawdust; cranberry "sauce," a gelatinous goo that ominously retains the shape of the can it slipped out of, doesn't help much. The standard vegetarian response -- a factory-shaped soybean log -- may be a case of the cure trumping the disease in terms of sheer horror. What, then, must you do, Grist reader? Here are three options for minimizing …

Dear Umbra, I am a seriously indulgent coffee drinker. Lately, there have been a ton of "green" coffee shops popping up. I like to support local coffee shops, and I want to believe that they are "shade-grown, fair-trade, organic," but I've wondered if they are being honest. How do I know if they are legit? Claudia GutierrezSan Diego, Calif. Dearest Claudia, Shade-grown, fair-trade, and organic are certifications, not just buzzwords. All three resulted from our wanting a way to ascertain, when buying coffee, that our addiction supported sustainable agriculture and fair labor standards, rather than displaced workers toiling in serfdom …