Climate Agriculture
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How to save the world’s oysters — and eat them, too
Consider the oyster — carefully. Photo: Wally GobetzCross-posted from Cool Green Science. The headlines were enough to make you throw away your shucking knife: “More than 85 percent of [oyster] reefs have been lost due to overfishing, according to a new study,” said The Independent. Foodie bloggers panicked over the news — was it suddenly […]
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USDA chief flatters industrial ag while Obama honors its greatest critic, Wendell Berry
A year and a half ago, I complained that President Obama’s food and ag policy was “giving me whiplash,” because the administration seemed to keep zigzagging between progressive change and the agrichemical status quo. Since then, a definite pattern has emerged: The administration puts real policy power behind the status quo — see, for […]
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Florida lawmaker wants to make farm photos illegal
If we just don’t look at what’s going on inside factory farms, everything will be fine. Right? Along with mountains of oranges, tomatoes, and sugar, Florida’s branch of Big Ag Inc. is a reliable producer of bad news. Whether it’s the fight over proto-slavery conditions for its tomato workers, the push to perfect genetically modified […]
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Farming is the new hipster occupation of choice
Twentysomethings don’t know what to do with their lives. Industrial food can’t be trusted. The public image of farmers is (slowly) improving — but the average age is going up and up. These are perfect conditions for a new generation of farmers, people in their 20s and 30s who are starting small farms and joining […]
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Minn. Rep. Collin Peterson’s crusade against climate policy rages on
Collin Peterson — a Democrat even the Koch brothers could love.Photo: Name Your Frame & Photography via Collin PetersonThe sad saga of climate legislation under Obama — its harrowing ride through Congress and final collapse — features many villains. For me, the most maddening isn’t some Tea Party ideologue railing against the “climate conspiracy.” Rather, […]
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Fed-up college kids take food buying into their own hands
Someone’s forming a co-op, my lord: college students organize to create the food system they want. Photo: Kitty BolteSay you’re a college student ready to eschew the standard pizza-burrito-pretzels-beer diet and start eating more whole, sustainably produced foods. Say you want to take it a step further and work to make healthy and ethical food […]
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Time to end the insane practice of lacing chicken feed with arsenic
As a jaded observer of the meat industry, even I’m flummoxed by this fact: It’s standard practice on factory chicken farms to dose those unfortunate birds with arsenic. The idea is that it makes them grow faster — fast growth being the supreme goal of factory animal farming — and helps control a common intestinal […]
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Your healthy alternative food may just be the same crap in different packaging [SLIDESHOW]
Looking to lower your impact? Here’s your cheat sheet. GoodGuide offers greenness and social responsibility ratings, via web or app, for tens of thousands of products, including food, clothing, toys, and cleaning supplies. Obviously, it’s massively useful to be able to look up a brand on your phone and see its health and environment score […]
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How to cook and eat a whole duck [VIDEO]
Nose-to-tail eating sounds like a trend, but it’s really just good practice. Indeed, even before British chef Fergus Henderson made “whole beast” cooking popular, the whole animal was getting used. Slaughterhouses big and small make sure to use every bit of every animal — that’s how they make their money: livers go into dog food, […]
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The Economist dismisses organic ag, while also making the case for it
This isn’t the only way.I’ve been reading The Economist’s “Special Report on Feeding the World” (intro here). So far, it’s typical Economist: compellingly written and impressively broad in scope — but largely uncritical of the status quo. The report doesn’t bring much new to the table, especially to those of us who follow the gloomy […]