Climate Food and Agriculture

Community food projects empowering low-income residents

Food is turning up everywhere, and I don't mean on your plate. For the past year, journalists and authors have stuck on the topic like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth, and what's especially notable is the focus on policy solutions and the Farm Bill. Articles are so numerous that as I started to compile them, I realized that I could spend a whole post just linking to them (find a few here).

As I contemplate the impact of our farm and food policy on the environment, how to reduce food miles, and the impact of our diet on global warming, I am also aware that local food is often perceived as elitist. Healthy and local food is often more expensive because farmers are taking care of their workers and the land, but it still needs to be accessible to everyone, both in regards to price and where consumers can buy healthy local food. One way that the Farm Bill can impact the ability of all people to eat locally is to fund programs that help connect low-income consumers to farmers, or in some cases to the land itself.

A frustrated resident speaks out

The following letter was mailed anonymously to Marian Kuper, whom we featured in last week’s “A Tale of Two Counties.” She shared it with Tom Philpott so we could give readers a sense of the frustrations brewing in CAFO country. We welcome responses from other perspectives. I know that others still believe the United States […]

Barack Obama unveils agriculture plan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama unveiled his agriculture plan yesterday on the campaign trail in Iowa. The plan includes all kinds of proposals that the Obama camp hopes will excite rural Americans — particularly those who reside in early-primary states. Obama’s ag plans include increasing funding to help farmers transition to organic, reforming the USDA’s […]

Time to think about the global food system

An excellent article, "The Globalization of Hunger," appears over at the Madre website on the absurdities (as in moving food all over the globe) and injustices (kicking people off their land so agribusiness can grow exportable crops) of the global agricultural system.

How the nation’s breadbasket is poisoning its own water supply

In late September, the corn and soybean fields of the lower Missouri River floodplain are a lovely dull brown, nearly ready for harvest. The row crops sprawl as far as the eye can see, their regimental march broken only by levees, gravel roads, the occasional band of cottonwoods, and the endless tracks of the Burlington […]

A wonderful dinner celebrating Fergus Henderson at Manhattan’s Savoy

Fergus Henderson Photo: Savoy. To certain vegans — the sort who recently saw fit to flay a chef who supports small farmers in the middle of Iowa (see comments below Kurt Michael Friese’s wonderful piece in Grist) — Fergus Henderson will be an object of derision. Feeling "a little dented”? Henderson would prescribe a bit […]

Noticing the elephant stomping Africa

Bob ("Prisoner of Trebekistan") Harris notices how often U.S. media aids and abets counterproductive U.S. foreign "aid" policies.

The same people whose worship of the so-called free market allows them to demolish countries are the ones leading the Bush Administration's efforts to ensure that the global response to global heating doesn't adopt any heresies. Which is why our policy response to global heating has been zilch.

A conversation with Michael Pollan

  In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz’s definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn’t engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don’t obsess and […]

Images of a sustainable-food revolution

Imagine a place where residents pull together to create a thriving store and restaurant serving fresh, local food. Imagine a place where the money appears, the dreams become real, the produce and pastured meat taste like home. Imagine a place where officials support these dreams with policies that fund organic farmers and encourage the purchase […]

Anti-bottled-water campaign kicks off in cities across U.S.

A Think Outside the Bottle campaign kicked off today, urging municipal governments to cut off bottled-water contracts and to press for greater disclosure of the source of bottled H2O. The campaign is spearheaded by Corporate Accountability International and joined by cities including Boston, Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Portland, Ore., many of which held taste tests today […]