Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Practice of composting animals raises red flags for greens
A growing number of states are allowing farmers to bury their deceased horses, cattle, and chickens and allow the remains to decay into compost. Environmentalists are leery of the practice, concerned that livestock pumped up with antibiotics and growth hormones might leach chemicals into groundwater as they decompose. Growth hormones in the water, growth hormones […]
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A recipe for no-boil pumpkin lasagna
For most of my adult life I’ve been anti-lasagna. It’s not that I refuse to eat it. Quite the reverse! I love to eat lasagna. I just refused to make it. The idea of boiling giant, unwieldy sheets of pasta always got on my nerves. It didn’t seem worth it, no matter how delicious the […]
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McSweeney’s satirizes the quest for eco-eats
“Understanding food labels you might encounter at Whole Foods”: Natural: Pretty much everything is natural, including this sentence. What makes it natural? The fact that it has the word “natural.” Conventional: Conventional says, “I love the system,” and we’re not even sure why you’re shopping here. You don’t want paper or plastic — you have […]
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Another study shows organic ag outpacing conventional
Apologists for industrial food production often level what they see as a devastating charge against organic agriculture: that it could never "feed the world." The claim goes like this: industrial ag produces higher yields, and as global population grows, we’re going to have to squeeze as much food as possible out of the earth, by […]
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Pennsylvania bans hormone- and antibiotic-free labels on dairy products
Pennsylvania agriculture officials have banned the use of hormone- and antibiotic-free labels on dairy products sold in the state, upsetting food-safety advocates and handing the chemically enhanced dairy industry a significant victory. The ruling takes effect Jan. 1 and would affect at least 19 companies that label their milk or other dairy products as having […]
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My search for organic amber spirits turned up only Scotch
On Grist, we’ve written about organic beer, organic wine, and organic vodka. But what about those of us whose heritage has left them with a deep and abiding love of the amber spirits? Are there eco versions of Irish, scotch, and bourbon whiskey available to us green-minded drunkards? I decided to investigate a bit, and […]
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Why gutting subsidies shouldn’t be the focus of Farm Bill reform efforts
A lot of people, myself among them, have spent substantial time this year trying to demystify the 2007 Farm Bill. But as it lurches into its stretch run — with passage possible by year-end — I fear that the bill is more shrouded in mystery than ever, even among sustainable-agriculture advocates. The answer ain’t blowin’ […]
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Fiji Water announces plan to become carbon negative
A bold new plan to bypass carbon neutrality and become carbon negative has been announced by, of all things, a bottled-water company. Fiji Water has announced specific goals to pursue renewable energy, forest preservation, and water conservation, and will buy carbon offsets to cover 120 percent of its greenhouse-gas emissions. Which is good and all, […]
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More evidence that industrial ag is destroying the planet
From an ecological standpoint, the fundamental problem with U.S. farm policy dating back to the ’70s is that it rewards farmers for maximizing yield at all cost. Encouraged to produce as much as possible, all the time, farmers have few incentives to conserve resources or protect water, air, or soil quality. The federal government’s dizzying […]
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Organic food is better for you
For years, studies showed no nutritional difference between organic and conventionally grown food. That’s because scientists were looking at macronutrients — vitamins A, B, C, and so on. But they’ve since learned that macronutrients are only part of the nutrition story. It turns out that there are all sorts of compounds like antioxidants and phytonutrients […]
