Articles by Grist staff

Could small farms provide fresh food year-round, even in northern climes?

Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It’s a common charge — and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture’s greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement’s supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M — that factory for future big-ag farmers […]

The Visible Hand of the Market

BP under investigation for possible manipulation of oil and gasoline markets Petro-behemoth BP is being investigated by two U.S. agencies for possible manipulation of crude-oil and unleaded-gasoline markets. (These are, of course, in addition to ongoing investigations of BP over a Texas refinery explosion, an Alaska pipeline spill, and alleged manipulation of the U.S. propane […]

An Eden Break

Birds return to Iraq marshes, but long-term recovery in doubt Birds have begun to return to restored wetlands in southern Iraq, the famed marshes rumored to have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. In decades past, ornithologists recorded more than 250 bird species in the region, including the fun-to-say Iraq babbler and […]

Reality Bites

U.S. automakers acknowledging that gas prices are likely to stay high Expect gasoline prices to stay between $3 and $4 a gallon for the rest of the decade, says … no, not some fearmongering environmentalist or peak-oil nut, but Chrysler CEO Thomas LaSorda. In fact, all of Detroit’s Big Three automakers have resigned themselves to […]