Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • California poised to approve deadly pesticide for strawberry crop

    The continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico helps one see other regulatory controversies in a different light. Take, for example, the battle in California over the use of the pesticide methyl iodide, a chemical so toxic, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “that even chemists are reluctant to handle it.” Methyl iodide, which according […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Louisianans take a break from oil-spill angst to celebrate local seafood

    Seafood abounds at the Plaquemines Parish Seafood Festival.Photos: Emily PetersonThe sixth annual Plaquemines Parish Seafood Festival, held this past weekend, had the usual fixings one would expect at a South Louisiana festival: fried seafood, a solid lineup of live local music, and plenty of cold beer to beat the high humidity and 90-degree temperatures. One […]

    Emily Peterson Climate & Energy

  • Leaving biodiesel Shangri-La for a farm amidst suburbia

    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. By David Hanson A grease bus breaking down in Berkeley is like having a Mac glitch at Steve Jobs’ house during the Apple Chirstmas party. […]

    Breaking Through Concrete team Food

  • Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay

    I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary.  Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • ‘Farmers Market Desserts’ lets fruit, not sugar, be the star

    Photos courtesy of Leo Gong/Chronicle Books Summer fruits from the farmers market are the supermodels of the produce world. Just like Heidi Klum doesn’t need makeup to be beautiful, a super-fresh White Lady peach or Seascape strawberry doesn’t need extra sweetening or seasoning to shine. But given the right recipe—one designed expressly for fruit and […]

    Bonnie Azab Powell Food

  • DC rejects soda tax but funds better school food

    The Washington, D.C. city council yesterday agreed to fully fund a recently approved “Healthy Schools” initiative — providing more money for school food, as well as funding local produce in school meals and establishing grants to expand school gardens and increase physical education — but not with a controversial “soda tax” as had been proposed. Rather, […]

    Ed Bruske Food

  • Endocrine disruptors really do suck

    U.S. manufacturers and agribusiness are addicted to endocrine disruptors — dangerous chemicals that alter the natural function of the body’s hormones. They are frequently used in plastics, in pesticides, and in personal care products and act in the human body as a “false” version of estrogen. They appear to be linked to a variety of […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • I eat weeds

    Flowers or weeds? Depends on what you’re in the mood for.(Steph Larsen photos) The first edible plant to poke its head out of the ground at my farm early this spring wasn’t lettuce, arugula, broccoli, or any other hardy plant widely seen at early farmers markets. It was stinging nettles. As a child, I nicknamed […]

    Steph Larsen Food

  • Homeless learn to farm in Santa Cruz

    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 day began in the parking lot of a real estate office off Hwy 17 south of San Jose. We parked Lewis Lewis there after […]

    Breaking Through Concrete team Food

  • Organic Valley lays down the law on raw milk

    Organic Valley started up in 1988 with a vision of being a different kind of milk cooperative, one that helped save small family dairies via promoting organic dairy products. “It was an idealistic, mission-oriented place in those days, spreading the gospel about the benefits of organic dairy and founded on the premise of economic-justice for […]

    David Gumpert Food