Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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An interview with author and nutritionist Marion Nestle
The contents of your dog’s bowl — kibble, kibble, more kibble — may not look that interesting, but to nutritionist Marion Nestle, they’re nothing less than a microcosm of the global food system. In her new book Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, Nestle (pronounced NES-uhl, no relation to the multinational) investigates […]
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Small-scale slaughterhouses are vital to the health of local food economies
In “Dispatches From the Fields,” Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America’s agro-industrial landscape. —– A trailer load of chickens. Photos: Ariane Lotti In the cold and dark that is 5:30 a.m. in […]
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FDA releases guidelines for developing genetically modified animals
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will today announce guidelines for the development of genetically modified animals, a step on the road to their broad commercialization. The agency is expected to ask companies developing genetically modified animals to report a range of information about how they were engineered and how the alterations could affect the […]
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The GMO seed giant expects Roundup to generate $1.8 billion in profits in 2008
Monsanto positions itself as a green company. “Using the tools of modern biology,” its website informs us, “we help farmers grow more yield sustainably so they can produce more and conserve more.” Compare that twaddle to this bit from Monsanto’s announcement on Tuesday: [Monsanto’s Chief Financial Officer Terry] Crews will indicate that Monsanto’s Roundup® and […]
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Future of Food director on ‘making soil sexy’
Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia burst onto the sustainable-food scene with her 2004 documentary the Future of Food, a biting, well-researched indictment of Monsanto and genetically modified food. I caught up with her at Slow Food Nation to discuss her current project, a documentary about a topic dear to my heart: soil.
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Why climate change may have more to do with your shopping cart than your car
Anna Lappé might be called a green-diaper baby. Her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, brought out the seminal Diet for a Small Planet back in 1971, and has been agitating forcefully for a just, sustainable food system ever since. Her father, the toxicologist Marc Lappé, was an early, important, and persistent critic of the agrichemical industry. […]
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The key political, economic, and cultural needs of young farmers
This piece is co-authored by Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 27, director of The Greenhorns and farmer/activist in the Hudson Valley of New York. —– Coast to coast, though there are thousands inspired to dig in and grow food, but it is currently only a dauntless few who manage to gain access to the land, capital, […]
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The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science
In 2002, a most unlikely book came out: an oversized, lushly produced, coffee-table tome on the ills of mass-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture. Grandly titled Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, the book contained stark photos of highly mechanized, monocrop farming, along with pungent, probing essays by Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and other seminal thinkers of […]
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Finding nirvana in the coffee capital of the United States
In “Mad Flavor,” the author describes his occasional forays from the farm in search of exceptional culinary experiences from small artisanal producers. —– While covering Slow Food Nation recently, I stayed in an unremarkable hotel located in a relatively uninteresting part of San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood. But I was as happy as a clam — […]
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What’s so eco about all those eco-meat labels?
In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices, and other diet-related quandaries. Free range: more sizzle than steak? Hi, Something I’ve been pondering a lot lately is the whole “free-range” meat market. After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have a lot of doubts as to […]
