Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • Burrito chain’s Food, Inc. sponsorship generates off-screen drama over farm-worker issues

    On July 13, Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it was throwing its marketing weight behind Food, Inc., a documentary that takes a highly critical look at the food system. The fast-food chain would be sponsoring free screenings of the film at 32 theaters nationwide. It would also be distributing material promoting the film at all its […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Wendell Berry on the promise of GMOs to ‘feed the world’

    “The inevitable aim of industrial agri-investors is the big universal solution. They want a big product that can be marketed everywhere. And the kind of agriculture we’re talking about that leads to food security and land conservation is locally adapted agriculture. And they can’t do that. Industrial agriculture plants cornfields in Arizona; locally adapted agriculture […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • As farmers battle weeds ‘conventionally,’ the chemical treadmill speeds up [UPDATED]

    The never-ending war on weeds. UPDATE at bottom of post. ————————————– I’m an ag nerd, so sometimes you’ll catch me reading stuff like Delta Farm Press–a trade publication for large-scale farmers in the deep south. I find the damnedest things on those reading jags. Here’s one: farmers down there–which is cotton, soy, and corn country–are […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Michael Pollan on the affordability of good, local, organic food

    I don’t think our goal should be to make all food in America as cheap as cheap food is now.  … If the goal is cheap food, we’re going to hurt our farmers, we’re going to hurt the environment, we’re going to hurt the public health.  The goal should be to give people the money […]

    Lisa Hymas Food

  • As MRSA gets worse, the FDA discovers antibiotic abuse on factory farms [UPDATED]

    Incubating chickens–and what else? FarmSanctuary.org In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages of the meat and livestock industries. UPDATE below. ————————– A bill now circulating in the House, sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D.-NY), would limit the amount of antibiotics that can be used on factory animal farms. There’s good news and bad […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • With a gust of wind, an Iowa crop duster can squash an organic farm

    A crop duster in action.Photo: Roger Smith via FlickrGrinnell Heritage Farm is 152 years old. Andrew Dunham is the fifth generation of his family to work this land about 50 miles east of Des Moines. He is a direct descendant of Josiah Grinnell, founder of the town and the man Horace Greeley once famously quoted […]

    Kurt Michael Friese Food

  • Taras Grescoe on factory salmon farming

      An endangered chum salmon attempts to jump a small dam on the Deschutes River in Washington. While researching my post on Cheesecake Factory, I came upon contradictory information on how many pounds of wild fish it takes to create a pound of farmed salmon. Industry sources like this one paint a (relatively)  rosy picture: […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Why the Cheesecake Factory really is gross

    Down on the farm: most salmon consumed in the U.S. comes from aquacultureIn a post on his group blog, the Internet Food Association, Washington Post blogger and food-politics columnist Ezra Klein poses the philosophical question, “Is the Cheesecake Factory Gross?” The context is a bet involving the highly regarded cookbook writer Michael Ruhlman, who recently […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • E. coli and Campylobacteriosis: Why Obama’s USDA food-safety pick is so important

    Side of E. coli with that burger?In Meat Wagon, we look at the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. —————————– As I reported Friday, a man with a Big Ag background has emerged as the frontrunner for a still-empty USDA post called “undersecretary of food safety.” The holder of this position oversees the […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Privatize the seas? If only solving overfishing were so easy

    School of hard knocksIn this month’s Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook writes that privatizing the seas through use of individualized transferrable quotas (ITQs) is the solution to the grave problem of overfishing. Recently, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco came out strongly (PDF) in favor of ITQs (which the agency is calling “catch shares”), and has committed her agency […]

    Rebecca Bratspies Food