Climate Food and Agriculture

All Stories

  • The Great Brain Robbery and the Seattle Pee Patch

    The neighborhood dogs use my daughter’s vegetable garden as a communal toilet. You can’t blame them really. The garden is right next to the sidewalk and they are just dogs. I suppose you could blame the dog owners holding the leash. But, are my dog-walking neighbors really that obtuse or are they victims of the […]

    Biodiversivist Food

  • Organic farming just as productive as conventional, and better at building soil, Rodale finds

    Organic agriculture is a fine luxury for the rich, but it could never feed the world as global population moves to 9 billion. That’s what a lot of powerful people — including the editors of The Economist — insist. But the truth could well be the opposite: It might be chemical-intensive agriculture that’s the frivolous […]

    Tom Philpott Agriculture

  • I raise pigs on annual pasture crops. Am I farming sustainably?

    Bob Comis with his porkers. Will they leave the land more productive than they found it? Photo: Zach Phillips The concept of sustainability isn’t very useful as a critique of industrial agriculture — all you have to do is create a friendly definition of “sustainable,” and the critique is turned on its head. However, sustainability […]

    Bob Comis Agriculture

  • Study: Organic chicken carries significantly lower salmonella risk

    Want it free of drug-resistant salmonella? Make it organic.Photo: sierravalleygirlThis study from the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety came out in November and has bounced around the internet, but for some reason I’m just now noticing it. It’s worth a look. The researchers looked at broilers — chickens raised for meat — from […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Journalists eat sugar substitutes so you don’t have to

    So maybe Tom Philpott convinced you to wean yourself off aspartame, or maybe you just think chemical-based sweeteners taste oogy. (Okay, ALL sweeteners are chemical-based, but you know what I mean.) Well, the folks at Salon have taken one for the team, eating a lot of gross cookies so you can know which sugar substitute […]

    Jess Zimmerman Food

  • How much should Japan worry about nuclear food?

    Japan has discovered potentially harmful levels of radiation in Tokyo tap water, and contamination levels in some foodstuffs have been high enough for the U.S. to halt imports.  Even if you live in Japan, you're unlikely to encounter these potentially dangerous eats — contaminated food is being kept out of grocery stores. But just in […]

    Jess Zimmerman Food

  • A well-fed world is a vegetarian world

    Samuel Fromartz doesn't like genetically modified food, but not for the reasons you think. We don't need more food, he argues in the Atlantic, but better access to food — there's actually plenty of food in the world for everyone to have enough, but most people can't get at it. GMOs don't do anything to […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • Introducing … the Vegan/Omnivore Alliance against Animal Factories

    Every day, Americans eat more than a half pound of meat per capita — one of the highest rates on the planet. The vast majority of it is produced with methods that abuse the environment, animals, workers, and public health as a matter of course. The handful of companies that dominate U.S. meat production suck […]

    Tom Philpott Agriculture

  • Can the United States feed China?

    China is worried — and rightfully so — that it might not be able to feed itself.Photo: Jerrold BennettIn 1994, I wrote an article in World Watch magazine entitled “Who Will Feed China?” that was later expanded into a book of the same title. When the article was published in late August, the press conference […]

    Lester Brown Agriculture

  • Jerks™ trademark the idea of ‘urban homesteading’

    The Dervaes family of Pasadena are urban homesteaders, and by god they want to be the ONLY urban homesteaders. You can grow your own food, or raise your own animals, or practice a sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle, I GUESS, if that sort of thing butters your muffin. But if you go around using the phrase […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture