Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Putting cow hormones into fish food makes them balloon
Update [2008-8-22 13:20:9 by Tom Philpott]:I was alerted to the rBGH-tilapia news item by this blurb in the Organic Consumers Association news feed on Aug. 19. But when you click on the link provided by OCA, you’re taken to a source dated 2003. Unlike reader Mr. Mean, who (very cordially) comments below, I sloppily didn’t […]
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Now that farmers have gotten big or gotten out, it’s up to alternative farmers
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. —– Since the early 1970s, if not before, U.S. farm policy has hinged on the mantra, “get big or […]
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Indonesian province puts moratorium on rainforest destruction
I just started as Greenpeace’s media director, in part because I wanted to help Greenpeace save the world’s rainforests, a topic I’ve written a lot about at Grist and elsewhere. Within a week of starting the job, I knew I’d made a good decision when I got this news release from our Southeast Asian office: […]
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Australia continues to deal with epic drought
Longstanding drought has wreaked havoc across Australia, drying up lakes into shallow, acidic puddles and threatening drinking-water supplies. Unable to coax rain from the sky, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has fast-tracked a plan to buy back water entitlements from the heaviest irrigators in the Murray-Darling basin, an agricultural stronghold which produces all of the country’s […]
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Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops
The British royal family is no stranger to controversy and media attention, but Prince Charles caused a new kind of worldwide media flurry on Tuesday when he sat down for an exclusive interview with the Telegraph (U.K.). This time around, though, it seems unlikely the media story will be covered by the British tabloids since […]
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Amid collapsing fisheries and factory-farmed salmon, how to choose sustainable seafood
In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. Hello Grist, The food worry that keeps me up at night is how best to buy fish. Should I buy “wild caught,” with […]
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The food system as ‘largest quasi-public utility in the world’
Apropos of the recent debate on Gristmill sparked by James Galbraith’s polemic on free markets, I got to thinking about something I recently read in Paul Roberts’ book The End of Food (which I reviewed here): [D]uring the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Congress created a vast system of of support for food production: a […]
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Urban gardening for the rest of us
Photo: lucy and her dent via FlickrAbout a quarter of the U.S. population lives in apartments or condos, according to the 2000 census [PDF], and most Americans will live in one or the other at some point in their lives. But apartment dwellers don’t have to miss out on the joys of growing their […]
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What it means to put 4.1 billion bushels of corn into our gas tanks
The USDA just raised its projection for how much corn it expects the ethanol industry to burn through this year by 150 million bushels. It now expects a total of 4.1 billion bushels of corn to be turned into liquid fuel. That’s about double the amount of corn that went to ethanol in 2006 (2.1 […]
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USDA says crops have shaken off flood damage
In early June, heavy storms and floods pounded the Midwest, threatening the 2008 corn and soy harvests. With heavy U.S. and European biofuel mandates in place, any major shortfall in these key crops would cause food prices to spike. Anticipating a poor harvest, investors bid corn and soy prices to all-time highs. Certain food-politics writers […]
