Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Pressure rises for a reform-minded USDA pick
The Obama transition team is taking its time mulling candidates to head up USDA. That’s a good thing, considering the generally dismal names that dominate the circulating short-lists. Meanwhile, the temperature is rising around Obama to pick a real reformer, not a business-as-usual politician or outright industry flack. The latest: New York Times op-ed pundit […]
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Notes from Stone Barns’ ‘Young Farmer Conference’
There’s a social movement cropping up in fields and markets across the country — America’s next generation of farmers are stepping up to the pitchfork. Young, excited and energized, they’re facing many challenges, but also reaping many rewards. To celebrate this burgeoning interest in farming, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, New […]
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Where does your food come from?
I wanted to recommend a story on Emmett Duffy’s Natural Patriot blog about where fast food comes from. This is not a topic I normally post on (or actually know that much about), but I loved this post because it’s a profound message combined with some interesting science.
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The food price blame game
Tactic No. 1: Create a straw man. Nobody in their right mind can claim that corn ethanol has no impact on corn prices, or that corn prices have no impact on food prices. You can only debate the extent of the corn’s impact. Here’s a conclusion from a study released this year [PDF] that supports […]
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Perennial rice on the rise?
It was good to read this weekend in the Land Institute’s The Land Report that they’re now working hard to develop perennial rice varieties (in addition to their well-known perennial prairie polyculture experiment, which could transform large parts of the American plains back into a wildscape that produces lots of food). Because agriculture is technically […]
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Impoverished Africans can’t eat their own crops
From an interesting article by Dave Harcourt in Ecoworldly: The castor [oil], equivalent to 12,000 tons of oil, would actually be grown by 25,000 families [small African farmers] contracted by GEE and would have a value of around US$ 10 million [$400 per year or $1.10 per day per family]. … Ashenafi Chote was one […]
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‘Second generation’ or not, biofuels contribute to Peak Soil
The Seattle Times has another story peddling the fantasy that there are "second generation biofuels" that magically appear without use of energy, land, or water (not to mention subsidies). The most revealing comment in the piece pushes that idea that biologic systems generate "waste," and that "waste" is a huge resource that’s going unused. Apparently […]
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New annual quota for bluefin tuna does the fish no favors, say greens
A new legal quota set Monday for Atlantic bluefin tuna is a “mockery of science” and may cause the tuna population to collapse, green group WWF warned. The 46 member nations of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas set the annual quota at some 24,000 tons, defying scientists’ recommendations that it be […]
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Food sovereignty needs to be the center of renewed negotiations
With each new event or international conference in 2008’s saga of economic and food crises, there are calls to complete the long-running Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations. The international players all act as if achieving a Doha agreement, seemingly any agreement, will help solve one or more aspects of these crises. The latest […]
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New research demonstrates that higher infant mortality rates surround CAFOs
Thanks to Proposition 2, Californians will soon phase out some of the most egregious confining animal conditions. However the rest of the country continues to utilize concentrated animal feeding operations for the production of meat, poultry and dairy products. CAFOs are industrial facilities that are designed to produce the most amount of meat in the […]
