Latest Articles
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Most U.S. food aid goes up in smoke
Celia Dugger, my favorite New York Times reporter, had another knock-out article in yesterday's paper. Titled "African Food for Africa's Starving Is Roadblocked in Congress," the piece lays out the absurd tangle of laws that govern the United States' food-aid program.
Rather than send money to Africa to buy food from African farmers to relieve hunger there, generating a little economic development in the process, U.S. policy stipulates that "American generosity must be good not just for the world's hungry but also for American agriculture," Dugger reports.
Thus all U.S. food aid must utilize food grown on domestic soil. But like another scheme designed to help farmers -- the commodity-subsidy program -- this one really benefits the middlemen, processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill.
Writes Dugger:
Just four companies and their subsidiaries, led by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, sold more than half the $700 million in food commodities provided through the United States Agency for International Development's food aid program in 2004, government records show.
These companies, along with U.S. shippers and anti-hunger NGOs, form what critics have called the "Iron Triangle" of food aid. Under the system they are fighting to maintain, only 40 cents of every dollar the U.S. spends on food aid actually buys food. Much of the rest literally goes up in smoke -- it's spent hauling U.S. grain to distant places.
The Bush administration is actually trying to reform the program; but Congress, impressed by the Triangle's political might if not its arguments, is holding out.
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Supermarkets push to the southern hemisphere, driving farmers out of business
The United States has made two great contributions to world cuisine over the last century: the fast-food franchise and the supermarket.
Temples of the cheap-food revolution, both institutions flourished in the 20th century, offering consumers convenience and the cachet of fast life. At the height of the post-war prosperity boom, before the yuppie-led backlash, fast-food and the supermarket occupied the cutting edge of food fashion in a rapidly suburbanizing nation.
At a Grocery Manufacturers Association convention in 1962, an air of hubris and self-celebration held sway that would not have been out of place at, say, a tech trade show in Silicon Valley, circa 1998. As Harvey Levenstein writes:
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Senate’s stab at energy legislation may be more moderate than House bill
A refinery at Anacortes, Wash. “Shame, shame, shame, shame!” That’s the furious chant that erupted from the Democratic section of the House of Representatives last Friday after Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) managed to eke out a victory for his Gasoline for America’s Security (GAS) Act, which would loosen environmental laws and boost industry incentives to […]
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Lost power source
Fans of the hit TV show Lost might have been wondering how the hatch/bunker gets its power. Last night we found out: geothermal energy.
Another example of a green energy source being mentioned during prime time television -- granted, it was for about five seconds, but we'll take what we can get!
And visitors to the Lost message boards can get a brief science lesson on how geothermal energy works from poster SlowElectron.
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Hapless Wetlands
Supreme Court will hear two Clean Water Act cases The first U.S. Supreme Court session under Chief Justice John Roberts will feature two cases pitting government regulatory power against private property rights — precisely the area where greens most fear Roberts’ jurisprudence. Both cases originated in Michigan, and ask whether the federal government has jurisdiction […]
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Jewel of Denial
Plastics plant on Texas coast blows up, no surprise to local activists Formosa Plastics is the self-proclaimed “Jewel of the Texas Gulf Coast.” But last week its plant in Point Comfort, Texas … how to put this … blew up, sending workers running for their lives. At least 11 ended up in the hospital. This […]
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Throw Momma From the Pontchartrain
Some post-Katrina floodwaters cleaner than expected Some of the floodwaters pumped out of New Orleans by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — about 250 billion gallons all told, dumped mostly into Lake Pontchartrain — may not have been as toxic as initially feared. Researchers at Louisiana State University took samples five to nine days […]
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Helter Swelter
2005 shaping up to be the warmest year on record Is it warm in here? Readings from about 7,200 weather stations worldwide indicate that 2005 will probably be the hottest … year … ever — breaking 1998’s record by about one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit. The Northern Hemisphere is heating faster, with the average 2005 […]
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For Robert Hass, poetry is part of the eco-arsenal
Robert Hass. Photo: Jeff Kearns. Readers of Robert Hass’s poetry are familiar with his fine-tuned and tender attention to the natural world. What they may not know so well are his efforts to take that devotion off the page and into boardrooms and classrooms. As United States Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997, Hass turned […]
