Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • What’s wrong with the USDA’s new MyPlate graphic? Plenty

    The collective wisdom in press reports last week was that the USDA’s new “easy to understand” ChooseMyPlate image is “better” than the old pyramid. Well, that’s not saying much. But it’s also completely beside the point. Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at how bad the pyramid image was (and I had a ball doing […]

    Michele Simon Food

  • FDA admits supermarket chickens test positive for arsenic

    Why is Big Ag playing chicken with our health?Back in March, Tom Philpott wrote about the “insane” practice of feeding factory-farmed chickens 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 disease called coccidiosis. The industry […]

    Tom Laskawy Agriculture

  • Amazing urban farm school for teen moms will be shut down

    [vodpod id=Groupvideo.10775052&w=425&h=350&fv=launch%3D43319691%26amp%3Bwidth%3D400%26amp%3Bheight%3D320] Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Hey, do you like education? Do you like keeping teen moms from dropping out of school? Do you like teaching kids about sustainable food and farming? Well, screw you, says the Michigan state government. Catherine Ferguson Academy, the amazing but embattled […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • Genetically engineered salmon’s fishy promises

    Cross-posted from Gilt Taste. For those who follow the theater of food politics, particularly the underwater portion of the drama, AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage genetically engineered salmon has played something of leading role for two decades, dating back to the 1990s when the fish was first conceived. The AquAdvantage salmon, in case you haven’t heard about it, […]

    Paul Greenberg Agriculture

  • Think the German E. coli outbreak couldn’t happen here? Think again

    An outbreak of a toxic, possibly novel, strain of E. coli known as O104:H4 continues to rage in Germany. At last count, more than 1,800 people have been infected and 19 have died — and unusually, young women rather than children or the elderly have been hit the hardest. So far, the outbreak seems confined […]

    Tom Laskawy Agriculture

  • Deadliest E. coli outbreak ever

    The E. coli outbreak in Europe has sickened more than 1,800 people, according the World Health Organization. But that's just cases drawn from hospital records. More people could be sick. And 18 have died, making this the deadliest recorded E. coli outbreak. If that's not unnerving enough, only two antibiotics have a real chance at […]

    Sarah Laskow Food

  • What a hoe! — and other secrets of an orderly garden

    Lookin’ sharp!Can you keep a secret? I think I’m in love. The object of my affection is about 5’4″, slender, and she’s the sharpest tool in the shed. Did I mention she’s a redhead? I’ve taken her out twice now, and we danced around the garden like we were made for each other. I’m talking, […]

    Steph Larsen Agriculture

  • Mushroom hunting and banjo pickin’ in the Ozarks [VIDEO]

    I find a lot of the stories for The Perennial Plate by searching the internet — but when I stumbled upon banjo-playing mushroom farmers Curly Miller and Carole Anne Rose, I immediately fell in love. Then I learned that their operation is all organic, which gave me all the reason I needed to make the drive […]

    Daniel Klein Food

  • Great places, great food: part one

    Is this your idea of a great place? Didn’t think so.Photo: Robert TerrellDavid Roberts has been sketching out a positive, unifying agenda for progressives under the banner of what he calls “great places.” It isn’t enough, David argues, to rail against the snarling philistinism of Sarah Palin or engage endlessly in the “decrepit political arguments […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • E-I-E-I-Oh no: Decades of antibiotics in farm animals lead to deadly superbugs

    When cows kill. This article was syndicated with permission from OnEarth. Stuart Levy once kept a flock of chickens on a farm in the rolling countryside west of Boston. No ordinary farmer, Levy is a professor of molecular biology and microbiology and of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. This was decades ago, and his chickens were […]

    Barry Estabrook Agriculture