Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • Nicholas Kristof on African hunger

    Nicholas KristofNicholas Kristof, the much-celebrated columnist for The New York Times, is essentially a Victorian-style moralist. In a typical column, he alights on some harsh scene–a slum in an Indian megopolis, a dirt-poor village in Cambodia–and delivers a heart-wrenching report. He then prescribes an extremely narrow “solution” to the problem he has uncovered–one that typically […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Can the Internet help small farms act big?

    Wired Science has a good piece on the potential for tech startups to play a “disruptive” role in commercial food distribution. The post looks at several web services that are trying to replicate the restaurant supply chain system dominated by produce distribution giant Sysco and its ubiquitous trucks via a network of small farmers, iPhones […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Biotech industry group alights on La Gloria to test backyard pigs

    Hogs in a CAFO. The good news is that bloggers and other hysterics aren’t the only ones taking seriously La Gloria, Mexico, as the possible origin of the swine flu pandemic. From an extremely interesting AP article: Scientists are returning next week to La Gloria, a pig-farming village in the Veracruz mountains where Mexico’s earliest […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’

    Too hot for freshmen? EVEN MORE UPDATES: Now that the NYT has weighed in, I guess it’s fair to say this story broke through to the mainstream. I’ll spare you all the assurances from WSU that this Bill Marler-funded resolution proves that the driving issue really was financial. In my view, Marler graciously provided a […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Lessons in fast-food greenwashing from The Simpsons

    Sunday’s episode of the Simpsons begins with a wickedly good greenwashing story: Krusty learns from one of his lawyers that “studies show your Krustyburger is the unhealthiest fast-food item in the world.” “Worse than a double Krustyburger?” “Somehow, yes.” Krusty introduces a green campaign centered on the vegetarian Mother Nature Burger, made of “100-percent wheat-fed […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Food

  • From bee collapse to good cheap wine, tasty morsels from around the web

    Can we pleazzzzze ban insecticides? When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. Way to bee, manOver on Salon, Julia Scott’s got a strong piece on that stubbornly persistent mystery, bee-colony collapse. Since 2006, the nation’s conventionally kept honey bees have been undergoing large annual […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Pollan takes Manhattan

    With his bestselling book In Defense of Food debuting in paperback, Michael Pollan spent Thursday on the TV/radio circuit in Manhattan. He was on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC.  My favorite bit is when he touches on antitrust in the food industry. “You have more concentration in the food industry than any other industry,” […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Big Food’s ‘local’ push: what’s it really about?

    Photo: TheTruthAbout…, via FlickrThe Ethicurean probably had it right when it declared yesterday that “local” jumped the shark. The shark in this case (or is it the jumper? I’m never sure which is which) is Frito-Lay and its Big Food brethren, which have embarked on marketing campaigns emphasizing the “local” producers who supply them. The […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Lay’s: the locavore’s junk food?

    Coming soon to farmers markets nationwide? A couple of years ago, a student group formed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to reform the campus’ dining halls. Calling the group FLO Food (FLO=fair, local, organic), the students wanted flavorsome, freshly cooked food — and preferably not from abused animals or exploited workers. […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • A farmer speaks: no to GMO wheat

    Editor’s note: Several weeks ago, the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) issued a press release proclaiming that 75 percent of its member farmers support the rollout of genetically modified wheat seeds. According to NAWG, wheat farmers are clamoring to follow their corn and soy counterparts toward a biotech-dominated future. Todd Leake, a wheat farmer […]

    Todd Leake Food