Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Two takes on antibiotic use on factory farms
In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. The meat industry wants to be viewed through the softening lens of the supermarket meat case: the shrink-wrapped splendor of chops, steaks, and breasts, presented in affordable and bountiful stacks. For the marketing to be effective, the dirty work of getting […]
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Part 1 of interview with local-food economist Ken Meter [PODCAST]
Local food economist Ken Meter(Jerry Carlson/Agri-Energy)Ken Meter, director of Minneapolis-based Crossroads Resource Center, is probably the country’s foremost thinker on the role of food in creating robust local and regional economies. I first encountered him at a Community Food Security Coalition conference in Atlanta in 2005, where he gave a presentation that forever changed the […]
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Ethanol gets skewered by recent CBO assessment
In its calm and measured way, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just delivered a blistering assessment of the environmental value of corn-based ethanol. The CBO had been charged by Congress to calculate just what the public is getting for its investment in ethanol production: specifically, the $0.45/gallon tax credit that gasoline blenders get for mixing […]
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Urbivore’s Dilemma, Week 6: How I turned vegetables into a time machine
This week’s bounty.(Jennifer Prediger photos) Welcome to week 6 of my adventures as a veggie box subscriber, which I’m chronicling in this Urbivore’s Dilemma series. This week I had an epiphany about my Community Supported Agriculture membership. I think I may have found a way to slow down time with vegetables! The vegetables in this […]
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Chicagoans get new roots and second chances from Growing Home farm
January 2011 update: Many of the photos have been removed from this series so they can be published in a Breaking Through Concrete book, forthcoming this year from UC Press. The real estate market dealt Melvin Price a double whammy. The 45-year-old builder and carpenter had been making a living in Chicago for years before […]
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Vintage soda ads: Can you spot the fake?
We ran across one of these old ads pushing pop for tots on Facebook and shook our heads disbelievingly, before learning it was a fake. But the sweetened beverage industry has stooped equally low in the past, all the way down to toddler eye level. Can you guess which one is a modern mock-up? The […]
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‘CAFO Reader’ editor Daniel Imhoff on the ills of factory ‘farms’
The CAFO Reader — a new book featuring essays by farmers Wendell Berry, Becky Weed, and Fred Kirschenmann, Republican speech writer Matthew Scully, journalist Michael Pollan, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., among many others — gives a full picture of the environmental, social, and ethical implications of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), and includes a […]
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Whistle while you work
How does my garden grow? Quite well, but with lots of weeds to pull!(Steph Larsen) Living in a place where I can grow things makes me want to burst out in song. And I’m not alone — there’s a long and storied tradition in many cultures of making music while we work. Long before […]
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Kick your industrial-beef consumption up a notch with Emeril!
Emeril Lagasse, industrial beef’s new best friend(Red Marble Steaks)Far be it for me to lament the state of food television. Don’t get me wrong — watching a man lurch about a stage kitchen, bellowing canned slogans (“Bam!”), and pandering to the studio audience, destroys my appetite. But people receive pop culture in multiple and unpredictable […]
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Urbivore’s Dilemma, Week 5: Getting by with a little help from my friends
Raspberries, currants, snap peas, lettuce, mint, and fennel showed up this week.(Jennifer Prediger) It’s Week Five of CSA living, which I’m keeping a journal of here in this Urbivore’s Dilemma series. This week’s CSA share gave me a taste of the plenitude of summer with raspberries, currants, snap peas, lettuce, mint, and fennel. I had […]
