Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • Don’t throw out the biochar baby with the bathwater

    When penning his stinging rebuke of biochar and all who support it, George Monbiot not only threw out the baby with the bath water but blew up the bathroom just to ensure no one ever considered bathing again. Admittedly he got in a few good blows but the rest just blows hot air. Biochar is […]

    Gloria Flora Climate & Energy

  • NYC’s attack on salt misses the forest for the trees

    Diet dilemmas Photo: George D Thompson In his most recent column the NYT’s John Tierney — a conservative political columnist turned “skeptical” science columnist — objects to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to reduce New Yorkers’ salt intake. He compares the proposed new policy to a mandatory experiment in which residents are unwitting (and possibly […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Bittman takes a bite out of the ocean

    Endangered species for sale Photo: MaRonin47 I’m a big fan of Mark Bittman. I’ve been reading him since his Cook’s Illustrated days in the early ’90s; I consider his weekly “Minimalist” column in The New York Times invaluable; and several of his cookbooks sit, stained and dogeared, on my shelf. Bittman made a career by […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Did Obama screw up ag subsidy reform?

    Over the weekend, the NYT detailed the trials and tribulations of the Obama administration’s attempts to trim farm subsidy payments of a certain size: Among the audacious proposals in President Obama’s budget was a plan to save more than $9.7 billion over a decade by putting strict limits on farm subsidies that are disbursed regardless […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Catching up on food news after two weeks in the fog of travel, speechifying, and redesign

    After two weeks in the fog of travel, speechifying, movie screenings, and redesign, I’ve missed commenting on a bunch of important stuff. I’ve emerged extremely energized by the potential of our new food “kingdom” — a place to dive deep into all sorts of issues relating the food we eat to the health of the […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Heirloom tomato debate

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that George Will keeps repeating his half truths to deny the degraded state of the climate, but what exactly Scientific American was thinking with this article about how heirloom tomatoes are “hardly diverse and are no more “natural” than grocery-store varieties” is a mystery to me. Except that sacred cows make the best hamburger, […]

    Erik Hoffner Food

  • Toward a less efficient and more robust food system

    Produce at a farmer’s market in North Carolina Courtesy RICHIR on Flickr Editor’s Note: This is a version of an address delivered before the High Country Local Food Summit on March 26, in Boone, N.C., organized by Appalachian State University’s Sustainable Development Department. The High Country is a three-county region in the mountains of western […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Whole Foods [hearts] Chilean grapes

    Photo taken in the produce section at Whole Foods Martet in Seattle, March 31, 2009.

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Using markets to make fisheries sustainable

    Around the world, over-fishing is leading to severe depletion of valuable fisheries. This is as true in U.S. coastal waters as it is in many other parts of the world. In New England waters, for example, after two decades of ever more intensive fishing, the groundfish fishery has essentially collapsed. But, we are not alone. […]

    Robert Stavins Food

  • The straight dope on local, organic weed

    Is it better to buy locally grown marijuana which may have been fed with chemicals, or organic hooch from far away?

    Lou Bendrick Food