Climate Food and Agriculture

Time bashes grain ethanol

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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All that glitters is not gold. And all that grows is not green.

That is the belated realization about grain ethanol -- in fact, about any ethanol whose feedstock is grown on cropland. Joe Romm has done a good job posting on this issue, including his report on the recent studies featured in Science magazine. I'd like to weigh in with a few additional points.

NYT op-ed: pesticides wiping out songbirds

When the little bluebird Who has never said a word Starts to sing Spring … It is nature, that is all, Simply telling us to fall in love. — Cole Porter, “Let’s Do It” The immortal refrain of an old Cole Porter chestnut — “birds do it; bees do it” — has taken on an […]

Biofuel boom leveling rainforest, Time reports

From an excellent article in Time: Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world’s top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it’s […]

Trash likely the source of dioxin tainting Italy’s mozzarella

Some batches of Italy’s famous buffalo mozzarella cheese have been tainted with dioxin, leading to alarm in the nation’s $500 million mozzarella industry. The source of the contamination? Buffalo near Naples are likely grazing in soil tainted with dioxin from piles of toxic garbage that the mafia-controlled trash business can’t, or won’t, get under control.

The burrito giant buys pork from celebrity farmer Joel Salatin

Chipotle Mexican Grill used to be, but no longer is, partly owned by McDonald’s. It runs 700 restaurants nationwide — with plans to roll out 125 more this year — and is considered one of the nation’s fastest-growing “casual dining” chains. And it seems earnestly interested in sourcing ingredients from small- and mid-sized farmers near […]

Chilean salmon-farming industry in a sad state

A virus called infectious salmon anemia is sweeping through Chile’s fisheries, bringing attention to the condition of the country’s third-largest export industry. On expansive salmon farms, fish are bred in crowded underwater pens. Fish poop and food pellets contaminate the water. As many as 1 million nonnative salmon escape each year, gobbling native species and […]

Recent studies: organic ag is just as productive, and better for you

For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds: 1) it produces essentially the same nutritional results as chemical-intensive farming, and 2) it’s less productive. Both of those criticisms are crumbling. This month, the Organic Center released a “state of science” analysis of peer-reviewed studies comparing the nutritional content […]

‘Heart-healthy’ pork from pigs with bad hearts

I live for this sort of stuff: Guys in white lab coats got to tinkering with pig DNA, hoping to conjure up pork rich in “heart-healthy” omega-3 fatty acids. Here’s what they did: A team from the University of Pittsburgh a first transferred the roundworm gene–fat-1–to pig foetal cells. After that, a team from the […]

Canada says no to ethanol waste as cow feed, and more

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. Back in January, a high USDA official made a pair of statements that say a lot about how we regulate industrial food production here in the United States. On the one hand, he admitted to a journalist that feeding cows high levels […]

The NYT hails the era of the hipster farmer

Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web. Hey, hipster! Wipe that smirk off your face and put that can of PBR down. It’s time to get your hands — and those stiff Carhardts — dirty. We don’t care how many obscure bands you have on your iPod, […]