Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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One Bad Scrapple Spoils the Bunch
Regulators reveal new information on China-U.S. food links The tangled food relationship between China and the U.S. keeps getting tangledier. As new details emerge in the wake of the March wave of pet deaths, concerns about the possibility of tainted food reaching U.S. dinner tables are growing. U.S. regulators said yesterday that cyanuric acid, a […]
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Senators call for a worldwide end to fishing subsidies
The only thing worse than overfishing our oceans and driving species to the brink of extinction is the government paying to do it. That's been the case for far too long, as upwards of $30 billion (that's billion, with a "b") worth of subsidies are handed over to the fishing industry every year. A whopping $20 billion of that is used for things like boat repairs, fishing equipment, and fuel -- expenses that allow for increased and intensified fishing practices.
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Twice in one week!
Monsanto has barreled its way toward dominance over the global seed market with strong-arm tactics and friends in high places. As evidence of the former, the roguish company once threatened to sue me — then a neophyte blogger with 30 readers — on the most trivial grounds possible. As for the latter, software monopolist Bill […]
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So far, small-scale, local-minded beekeepers have dodged hive collapse.
This post marks the launch of Fork it Over, in which I (attempt to) answer questions inspired by my Victual Reality column. Got a question about food and the politics that surround it? Fork it over, by emailing it to victuals(at)grist(dot)org. Reader Brooklynolmec writes in to inquire: are organically managed bees faring any better these […]
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Savor your flavors with the slow-food movement
This is the fourth in a series of articles about connecting with people over food. Read others on setting up a dining co-op, celebrating Passover, and hosting an Earth Dinner. When I told a friend that I was writing an article about slow food, she said, “What’s that? The opposite of fast food?” In a […]
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No more compromise
This is one issue where there can't be any compromise at this point: the demand for shark fin soup is decimating shark populations and marine ecosystems, and must stop. Whereas most forms of animal consumption put strains on ecosystems, this practice is extreme and environmentalists should continue to wage a "zero tolerance" campaign against it. It's not cultural imperialism or Big Brother, it's common sense and respect for life.
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A guest blog from farmer’s rights legend Hope Shand
In the global fight to preserve what’s left of agricultural biodiversity from the ravages of the multinational chemical/seed giants and their government lackeys, no civil-society organization stands taller than the ETC Group. Among other projects, ETC documents the growing dominance over the global seed market by a handful of firms: Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dupont. The […]
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How food processing got into the hands of a few giant companies
Two years ago, dairy giant Dean Foods shuttered a milk-processing facility in Wilkesboro, a town at the eastern edge of North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. Photo: iStockphoto Dean processes 35 percent of the fluid milk in the U.S. and Canada — roughly equal to the combined market share of its three biggest rivals combined. In my […]
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Some miscellaneous but connected items
The daily news is never short of articles on biofuels these days, but these three caught my eye today.
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Now that I’ve actually read the book …
When I caught up with 100-mile dieters Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon a few weeks ago, they were just kicking off their book tour with a stop in Toronto, and I hadn’t even had a chance to read Plenty, in which they recount a year of local eating. Sure, I had the basic info — […]
