Climate Food and Agriculture

Helping U.S. farmers transition to organic

Organic food has take criticism lately, because a portion is flowing from overseas. (All those food miles, all that lost support for American farmers.) Well, there's a reason that trend is underway: Not enough American farms are growing organic crops and fewer still are converting, so demand is exceeding supply. With the Farm Bill, attempts are underway to address that problem.

PETA announces sexiest veggie celebs of 2007

PETA has announced this year’s winners of their annual “Sexiest Vegetarian” contest. This year’s hottest plant-eaters? Tonight Show band leader Kevin Eubanks and American Idol-crooner-turned Grammy-winner Carrie Underwood (who won in 2005 as well, but dropped to runner-up last year). This year’s runners up include our favorite babe teenage sleuth Kristen Bell (who knocked Underwood […]

Moscow on the Cud Sign

Russian capital introduces label for GM-free food Now you can have your GM-free borscht and read it, too: next week, the city of Moscow will debut a groundbreaking label for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients. Under the leadership of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the city has devised a voluntary system of testing and […]

Orange You Glad We Didn’t Say Switchgrass?

Fruit may be the latest source for biofuel madness Could your kumquat power your Kia? A team of U.S. scientists has made a low-carbon fuel from fructose, the sugar in many fruits. It could be a better bet than ethanol, with 40 percent more energy, less vulnerability to water, and more stability; since it can […]

Don’t blame farmers for the farm-subsidy mess

Agricultural and food products are not like other commodities. Their price is that of life, and below a certain threshold, that of death.— Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart, A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis Last month, after Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini dared question the virtue of certain […]

Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished

This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's "case for corn-based fuel." I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field.

How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered?

That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that "an evil to be conquered" isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, but as quantities increase, so does the damage. I mean, what's not to like about a fuel that milks billions from taxpayers, increases the cost of food all around the world, exacerbates the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, and returns no more energy than it produces?

Scarce Fell On Alabama

Crops, neighborly relations suffer in Southeastern U.S. drought A severe drought is gripping most of the Southeastern U.S., threatening crops, inspiring prayer, and turning neighbors against each other. “It’s one of the worst droughts in living memory in the Southeast at this point,” said Doug LeComte, a drought specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

Understatement of the week

A federal judge tells the Bush administration that, yes, there is a difference between wild fish and farmed fish.

"A healthy hatchery population is not necessarily an indication of a healthy natural population," [Judge Coughenour] said.

Insert your insult here ...

Even USDA researchers are a bit creeped out by corporate control of food

Food production and retailing have gotten so squarely under the heel of a few corporations that even the USDA is raising an eyebrow. At the top, the agency teems with PR flacks for the agribusiness giants. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t competent researchers among the rank and file. One of them, Steven W. Martinez, […]

Food? Farms? No connection at all!

From the BBC:

The Linking Environment And Farming organisation found that 22% of 1,073 adults questioned did not know bacon and sausages originate from farms ... The survey also found four in 10 people did not know yoghurt is made using farm produce, nearly half were unaware the raw ingredients for beer start off in farmers' fields and 23% did not know bread's main ingredients came from the farm.

(I'm not pinging on the Brits; I'm sure the U.S. is even worse.)