organic food
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Family (farm) affair: my connection to Eliot Coleman’s rise to prominence
Portrait of the farmer as a young man: Eliot Coleman with children, circa early 1970s.Reprinted with permission from Melissa Coleman. I’m not sure exactly what it means to play a cameo role in a family memoir exploring the roots of today’s food movement; but certainly it makes you keenly aware of how quickly the years […]
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Want a better organic garden? Call out the soil-critter army
The helpful Jerusalem cricket.Photo: Franco FoliniCross-posted from Cool Green Science. There are 1 billion bacteria in a single gram of soil. (Give or take a few million.) But how can you get that army — and its insect friends, like the two-inch Jerusalem cricket pictured to the right — to help you grow bigger veggies […]
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California schemin’: How a fake organic fertilizer bamboozled farmers and watchdogs alike
What’s the difference?: What seemed like organic fertilizer to farmers could have been spiked with the synthetic kind.Truck photo (left): Iris Shreve Garrott It’s no secret that the organic food industry has seen explosive growth, taking only a mild drubbing through the recession and then continuing its ascent. At the heart of that growth has […]
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Factory farms the only way to ‘feed the world’? Not so, argues Science paper
To “feed the world” by 2050, we’ll need a massive, global ramp-up of industrial-scale, corporate-led agriculture. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Even progressive journalists trumpet the idea (see here, here, and here, plus my ripostes here and here). The public-radio show Marketplace reported it as fact last week, earning a knuckle rap from Tom […]
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Organic farming just as productive as conventional, and better at building soil, Rodale finds
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 […]
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Study: Organic chicken carries significantly lower salmonella risk
Want it free of drug-resistant salmonella? Make it organic.Photo: sierravalleygirlThis study from the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety came out in November and has bounced around the internet, but for some reason I’m just now noticing it. It’s worth a look. The researchers looked at broilers — chickens raised for meat — from […]
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Dairy cows frolic in meadow to celebrate spring [VIDEO]
Still trying to keep it positive! One thing that that makes it easier is that spring really has arrived up here in the North Carolina mountains — it must be 70 degrees, and the arugula we planted a few weeks ago in cold frames is taking off. Evidently, it’s spring-time in England, too. I dare […]
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Debunking the stubborn myth that only industrial ag can ‘feed the world’
Hold the agrichemicals: Organic ag could keep markets brimming with food. I’ve written about it once already, but I want to return to The Economist’s recent special series about how industrial agriculture is the true and only way to feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit the world by 2050. The framing, I think, […]
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Despite its Horizon brand, dairy giant Dean Foods really doesn’t get organic
Dean Foods is by far the largest U.S. dairy processor. According to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Dean processes 40 percent of fluid milk consumed in the U.S., which it distrubutes in a dizzying array of brands. Its dominance extends to organic milk, too — Dean’s Horizon brand is the largest supplier of organic milk. Dean’s […]