Food and Agriculture

The birds and the weeds: A farm conservation love story

A recent study shows that weeds on farms are crucial to keeping birds and other wildlife alive.

Heather Smith Agriculture

What the Times’ organic tomato story missed: Golf courses

Farming organic winter tomatoes in Mexico definitely has its problems, but Del Cabo's Larry Jacobs says water isn't one of them.

Tom Laskawy Food

Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse, says Pepsi

An Illinois man is suing Pepsi Co. because, he says, he found a mouse in his can of Mountain Dew. But Pepsi says the guy is pulling a Strange Brew, and here's how they know: If there really were a mouse in a Mountain Dew can, it would have dissolved into "a jelly-like substance" before the guy could find it. Seriously, this is their defense.

Jess Zimmerman Food

Greasy to gourmet: Seattle chefs help schools trade corn dogs for couscous

With the help of local chefs, the Seattle School District makes school lunches healthier by scaling up examples set in smaller towns like Berkeley.

Claire Thompson Food

Is your all-you-can-eat shrimp killing the mangroves?

Kennedy Warne, author of Let Them Eat Shrimp, discusses the connection between shrimp farming and the disappearance of some of the most biologically productive ecosystems on Earth.

Twilight Greenaway Food

Organic food is not always sustainable food

Good food, as we've come to know it in that last few years, has a few characteristics: It's local. It's grown using responsible, land-loving techniques, like crop rotations and polycultures. And it's organic, raised without chemical fertilizers and poison pesticides. At one point, “organic” was shorthand for all of that, because the same people who cared enough to grow their vegetables with manure cared about environmental sustainability and tended to be local.

But now “organic” can be shorthand only for adherence to a certain set of rules that outlaw certain concentrations of certain types of fertilizers and pesticides, and as the New York Times points out, it sometimes doesn't mean much else.

Sarah Laskow Agriculture

Doe, a deer, a sustainable protein source to last all winter

I am not a hunter. I don’t (and will not) own a gun and, though I’ve toyed with the idea of bow hunting in the past, my aim really stinks. Even so, the deer population where I live does need to be thinned, since we’ve taken their natural predators away. And I sure do appreciate […]

Steph Larsen Food

Will the Butterball raid yield any real results?

If turkey were beer, Butterball would have the brand power of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors combined. From six plants, the company produces 1 billion pounds of turkey each year and exports the meat to over 50 countries. Given this dominance, the Butterball brand has been a priceless asset to the company — until Thursday morning. […]

Erik Marcus Agriculture

Can the 2012 Farm Bill protect the Ogallala Aquifer?

Kansas wheat.Photo: Brian McGuirkMy father farmed in Kansas and envied those lucky farmers in the wetter states to the east of us, who could grow 200-bushel corn and other lucrative crops like soy beans and sugar beets. He had to satisfy himself with wheat, a drought-tolerant crop first brought to the States from a place […]

Julene Bair Agriculture

Scrooged: FDA gives up on antibiotic restrictions in livestock

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled a Scrooge move just before Christmas. The agency published an entry in the Federal Register declaring that it will end its attempt at mandatory restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The agency isn’t advertising the shift, though: This news would have remained a secret if […]