Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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The New Agtivist: Inga Haugen, farm girl at large
Photo: Cathrine Windyk Inga Haugen may look a little like Heidi, but she’s a modern-day farm girl through and through. In 1993, her family moved to the small town of Canton, Minn. (population less than 400), to Springside Farm, 230 acres of rolling hills and grazing land that was then a hobby farm. Her mother, […]
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Insane Disney WWII propaganda video boosts Big Ag
Ever wonder why U.S. agriculture gets such huge subsidies for things like corn and wheat? It turns out it's because we're trying to smother Nazis under flour drifts and build a corn bridge from London to the Black Sea. At least, that appears to be the contention of Disney animators in 1942. This video illustrates […]
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McDonald’s rings in 2012 with farmwashing
Remember last year’s Washington state-based “From Here” campaign, which added a “locavore” twist to McDonald’s highly processed offerings? Well, the fast food giant will take farmwashing to a national scale starting next month with a truly groan-worthy advertising campaign. Here is one of the upcoming ads: This is all part of the company’s desire to […]
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A dollar badly spent: New facts on processed food in school lunches
Photo: USDA I want to draw attention to an eye-opening investigative report on school lunch that has gotten a bit lost in the holiday shuffle. In a collaboration between The New York Times and the Investigative Fund, reporter Lucy Komisar delved into the billion-dollar business of the national school lunch program and found some unsettling news. […]
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Dirty South: Youth farms keep New Orleans teens in school gardens
The effort solves an important riddle: how to keep students engaged with food after eighth grade.
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Sorry Mrs. O, but jumping jacks aren’t enough
At a recent summit on childhood obesity, the first lady announced a shift in her well-known Let’s Move campaign — away from food reform and toward an increased focus on exercise. Instead of “forcing [children] to eat their vegetables,” she told her audience, “it’s getting them to go out there and have fun.” Yes, you […]
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Whippersnappers unite: Young farmers work to change 2012 Farm Bill
A group of young farmers visiting Sen. Olympia Snowe’s office in Maine.Across the U.S., young people are heeding the call for a more just, sustainable, and healthy food system, and are heading to the fields to build it themselves. They are working on farms and starting their own small-scale farm businesses from scratch. But, as […]
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The bugs that ate Monsanto
The corn rootworm.Photo: Jimmy SmithNow that 94 percent of the soy and 70 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. are genetically modified, Monsanto — one of the companies that dominates the GMO seed market — might look to some like it’s winning. But if we look a little closer, I’d say they’re holding […]
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2011: Sustainable food trends
A good year-end trend list should do two things simultaneously: confirm the conscientious reader’s suspicions while providing a few surprise nuggets. Sustainable food is a vast category with many opportunities for interpretation, so what I offer up here is an entirely subjective list of favorites. In other words: These are just a few of the […]
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Your mom was right: Don’t eat raw cookie dough
I know, I know, it's so good. But a study of a 2009 E. coli outbreak, led by CDC researchers and state health officials, has traced the contamination back to prepackaged raw cookie dough. Turns out ready-to-bake is not the same as ready-to-not-bake-and-get-right-to-the-eating. Ugh, god, what are we supposed to scarf when we get dumped […]
