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  • Anti–school garden campaigner Caitlin Flanagan, on Colbert back in ’06

    The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Caitlin Flanagan www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy Okay, this post means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I really should have my nose buried in a report on consolidation in the agriculture sector, or be working on a real article. But ever […]

  • Everyone wants a piece of Belize

    One day in December, the residents of the seaside village of Punta Gorda in Belize looked out to the horizon and saw something unexpected: Jamaican fishing boats. They had arrived, unannounced and without permits, to fish in Belize’s diverse waters. Many of Punta Gorda’s local fishermen still work the shallow waters inside the Belize Barrier […]

  • Thoughts on The Atlantic’s attack on school gardens

    Hands-on education at Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard. Photo: Edible SchoolyardFor several years starting in the early ’90s, I worked as a remedial math and writing teacher at Austin Community College. At that time–and, for all I know, now–the Texas public education system was mercilessly stratified: high-income districts lavished resources on schools, while their counterparts in low-income […]

  • ‘Water’ author Stephen Solomon talks resource intelligence

    Author Stephen Solomon recently suggested we need an “Al Gore of water” — a public champion to raise the profile of water scarcity threats and opportunities, as Gore has done for climate change. Solomon, an economics journalist, makes a bid for that role himself with his new book Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, […]

  • Russ Parsons on launching a civil, inclusive food-system debate

    Can we all just get along? Image: Tom Twigg for GristIn a recent article, the LA Times foodie pundit Russ Parsons attempted to start a “more constructive give-and-take, the start of a true conversation” on the food system. He argues the debate has congealed into a tedious battle between “hard-line aggies” who are “convinced that […]

  • New report calls for atrazine review

    An important new report on atrazine was published yesterday and it’s about time. Pesticide Action Network and Land Stewardship Project have brought together the science and farming communities to make a strong statement about the need for a new review of the herbicide atrazine and to outline alternatives for its use. I’ve followed the atrazine […]

  • Lessons on the food system from the ammonia-hamburger fiasco

    In case you missed it last week, The New York Times ran an excellent article on a South Dakota company called Beef Products Inc., which makes a hamburger filler product that ends up in 70 percent of burgers in the United States. To make a long story short: Beef Products buys the cheapest, least desirable […]

  • Ammonia-treated burgers, tainted with E. coli!

    In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Few who saw the documentary Food Inc. will forget the scene involving Beef Products Inc., a South Dakota company that makes a widely used hamburger filler product. No other industrial-meat company allowed director Robert Kenner to enter the shop […]

  • Soybeans threaten Amazon rainforest

    Photo courtesy Kanko* via FlickrSome 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more U.S. cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest. For close to two centuries […]

  • Boring conference food: our culinary future?

      The way of all cuisine? This is a guest post by David Gumpert, author of the Raw Milk Revolution. ————- When a good Jewish mother or grandmother knows she’s going to have a big group of special guests, she shifts into high gear to prepare meals. (Yes, I’m definitely stereotyping here, but bear with […]