Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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,” […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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Monsanto targets public radio to spread false biotech messages
Editor’s note: This post originally focused on NPR; but we’ve since found that the Monsanto ads run on Marketplace, produced by American Public Media, which isn’t directly affiliated with NPR. We regret the confusion. —————- Monsanto’s ad blitzFor years my alarm has been set to public radio so I can lie in bed for five […]
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Drought, fish, and our fruit-and-veg problem
High and dryIn the United States, when people say “eat your veggies,” they are essentially urging you to take a bite out of California — or, more to the point, take a a big swig of its increasingly scarce water supply. How much do we rely on California for fruits and veg? With its rich […]
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Another symptom of swine flu: instant amnesia
Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist Swine flu: how very two weeks ago. Sure, H1N1 transmission is “still on the upswing” in the United States, and the World Health Organization warned that as much of a third of the globe’s population could eventually catch it, Reuters reported last week. But the disease is turning […]
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Resistance grows to increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline
The ethanol lobby may still be reeling in the subsidies, but it doesn’t seem to be having any luck dealing with their other obsession, the so-called “blend wall,” i.e. the legally prescribed limit to the amount of ethanol that can be mixed into gasoline. The NYT has a nice summary of the mounting scientific and […]
