Cross-posted from Wonk Room. The Tea Party Congress doesn't just hate EPA rules that protect against industry destroying our country with greenhouse-gas pollution, mercury, coal ash, and mountaintop removal. By a veto-proof margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to prohibit Clean Water Act limits on pesticide pollution of lakes, streams, and rivers. Lobbyists for industrial agriculture polluters cheered the 292-130 vote for H.R. 872, which "will amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Clean Water Act to clarify Congressional intent and eliminate the requirement for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for applications of …

Despite planting record amounts of corn and soybeans this year, U.S. farmers are sitting on unexpectedly small stockpiles of both crops. Meanwhile, the demand for corn is crowding out use of land for other crops, including cotton. The USDA reports underscored that U.S. farmers are reaching the limits of arable land in the world's biggest crop exporter … Spring wheat sowing, while among the biggest in decades, could yet shrink. A Reuters analysis suggests that this year could see the largest corn harvest in U.S. history, and yet food prices are forecast to rise 3.5 percent, threatening unrest in countries …

Genetically modified seed giant Monsanto is notorious for suing farmers [PDF] in defense of its patent claims. But now, a group of dozens of organic farmers and food activists have, with the help of the not-for-profit law center The Public Patent Foundation, sued Monsanto in a case that could forever alter the way genetically modified crops are grown in this country. But before you can understand why, it's worth reviewing an important, but underreported aspect of the fight over GMOs. One of the many downsides to genetically engineered food is the fact that modified genes are patented by the companies …

Remember neonicotinoids? They're the widely used class of pesticides that an increasing body of evidence -- including from USDA researchers -- implicates in the collapse of honeybee populations. Neonicotinoids are marketed by the agrichemical giant Bayer, which reels in about $800 million in sales from them each year. Germany (Bayer's home country), France, and Slovenia have either banned their use outright or limited it severely. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA has stood by its approval of them -- even though its own scientists have discredited Bayer's research purporting to declare neonicotinoids safe for bees, and the USDA's chief bee scientist, Jeff …

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, The other day I was sitting on the couch after a day of eating an onion-rich diet and wondered ... how much impact can a person have on climate change by avoiding flatulence-producing foods? Resourcefully yours,Rob D. Troubled by your bubbles?A. Dearest Rob, I appreciate your desire to not turn the Earth into a Dutch oven, Rob. So let me cut to the cheese, if you will. According to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse of the National Institutes of Health, "most people produce about 1 to 4 pints a day and …

Organic agriculture is a fine luxury for the rich, but it could never feed the world as global population moves to 9 billion. That's what a lot of powerful people -- including the editors of The Economist -- insist. But the truth could well be the opposite: It might be chemical-intensive agriculture that's the frivolous luxury, and organic that offers us the right technologies in a resource-constrained, ever-warmer near future. That's the conclusion I draw from the latest data of the Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute's Farming Systems Trial (FST), which Rodale calls "America's longest running, side-by-side comparison of conventional and organic …

Samuel Fromartz doesn't like genetically modified food, but not for the reasons you think. We don't need more food, he argues in the Atlantic, but better access to food -- there's actually plenty of food in the world for everyone to have enough, but most people can't get at it. GMOs don't do anything to improve that situation, they just make more of things -- and what they make more of, specifically, is meat, since most GMO crops go to animal feed. That's the least efficient way to feed the world, says Fromartz: Meat is an inefficient source of calories, …

China is worried -- and rightfully so -- that it might not be able to feed itself.Photo: Jerrold BennettIn 1994, I wrote an article in World Watch magazine entitled "Who Will Feed China?" that was later expanded into a book of the same title. When the article was published in late August, the press conference generated only moderate coverage. But when it was reprinted that weekend on the front of the Washington Post's Outlook section with the title "How China Could Starve the World," [$ubreq] it unleashed a political firestorm in Beijing. The response began with a press conference at …

Fishing is ripe for innovation. New catch limits are critical for sustainability -- without them, fish stocks would collapse, and then nobody has a job, plus a protein source vital for the planet's expanding population is wiped out. But they force fishermen to catch fewer fish, which means less money. A string of new programs and techniques are addressing the cash issue, allowing fishermen to make more scratch even as they bring in less catch. You've heard of energy audits for your home. Well, now Steve Eayrs, a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, is conducting them …