Climate Food and Agriculture

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tuna

California loses suit to make tuna companies issue mercury warnings California law requires products containing chemicals that could cause reproductive harm or cancer to have warning labels, but a state Superior Court judge has ruled that the law does not apply to mercury-licious canned tuna. Mercury has been shown to slow neurological development, thus the […]

The Fume, the Crowd, the Berries

EPA withdraws plan to approve toxic fumigant methyl iodide After contriving to approve toxic fumigant methyl iodide for use in strawberry fields forever, the U.S. EPA has withdrawn the plan in the face of fierce opposition from California officials, labor unions, and enviros. The approval of methyl iodide was to be the culmination of a […]

Check ’em out.

Last year, I tried to keep up with Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon and their campaign to follow a 100-mile diet. I failed, by only blogging about parts one through five. Since then, parts six through eleven have been published, which can now all be found on the 100-mile diet website:

My problem with David Kamp’s NYT review of Michael Pollan’s new book

In his review of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, published in Sunday's NYT Book Review, David Kamp expresses a bit of received wisdom that needs rethinking.

Kamp, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and GQ who himself is writing a book about food, generally approves of Pollan's well-documented indictment of the dominant U.S. food system and exploration of its alternatives (which I reviewed here).

But to the big-picture problems presented by Pollan, Kamp demands big-picture solutions. And here is where I think Kamp, like many commentators on the vast-scale environmental troubles plaguing our culture, goes astray.

Under the Covers: Getcha grub on

Grub, as defined in the book of the same name by Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry:

grub* (grəb), n.

1. Grub is organic and sustainably raised whole and locally grown foods;
2. Grub is produced with fairness from seed to table;
3. Grub is good for our bodies, our communities, and our environment.

*Grub should be universal ... and it's delicious.

Last night, I went with a cadre of social Gristers to a book reading and signing by Lappé and Terry at the Elliott Bay bookstore. Their book, Grub: ideas for an urban organic kitchen, is half scary facts and figures about our food system and the chemicals therein, half earth- and people-healthy menu plans (complete with soundtrack suggestions and short poems and essays to compliment the meal), and 10 percent resource guide. (And apparently I suck at math.)

Much like the book, the reading was a good mix of factual bits and personal stories about the authors' relationship with food, spiced with bits of humor. Lappé, coauthor (along with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé) of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet and cofounder of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, joked about a book she reads when she needs a laugh, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics. Terry, a chef and founding director of b-healthy!, chuckled about his past forays into fruitarianism and even breatharianism before realizing he was a "grubarian," adding that "to embrace grub, you don't have to give up anything -- except maybe a mouthful of pesticides." The real fun, however, began after the bookstore event.

They Put the “Dies” In “Subsidies”

Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” traced back to farm subsidies You know that massive “dead zone” that shows up every year in the Gulf of Mexico? The oxygen-starved, life-free patch of water about the size of, oh, Connecticut? That’s your tax dollars at work. The zone is caused largely by nitrogen-based fertilizers, which flow downriver […]

SOL: Sustaining Ourselves Locally

According to the Current TV Studio blog, SOL, a viewer-contributed piece about a sustainable development project in Oakland, will be airing on TV.

I think this is a good example of how people like you, armed with a camera and a passion, can produce a short film that could potentially reach 28 million homes (according to a company press release [PDF]).

Here's the synopsis on Current:

This is specifically a piece on an urban sustainable development project in Oakland that consists of 9 people working together to do community environment work. Amazing project that focuses on everything from compost and farming to food justice.

Watch it now.

Ethanol dreams and ethanol realities

Christopher Cook has a piece in the American Prospect identifying my central concern about the ethanol boom.

To wit, here are the sustainability advocates:

An array of ideas are afloat to encourage a more sustainable biofuels expansion: a diversified renewable energy policy that, rather than expanding corn crops, promotes more wind power and cellulosic energy from switchgrass and crop residues (which may favor localized, small-scale production); a federal version of Minnesota's model, creating targeted incentives for farmer co-ops; and increased research spending by the USDA and Department of Energy to develop smaller-scale biofuels processing plants.

Sounds great, huh?

Here's the reality:

Is FishScam.com a scam?

I was reading the April 10th edition of The New Yorker this morning (for the cartoons, I'll admit). As I was flipping through the pages searching for the next illustration, I came across this full page ad that featured a message that caught me completely off guard.

The smaller text reads as follows:

Environmental scares about trace amounts of mercury in fish rely on a study of island natives who eat huge amounts of whale meat. However, scientists who study heavy fish-eaters find no health risks from mercury. So unless you're lunching on a Moby Dick sandwich, there's no reason to worry.

Fish is good for you. Baseless anxiety (or whale blubber) isn't.

No health risks from mercury? No reason to worry? Now, I don't eat fish, so I haven't researched this issue myself, but something fishy seems to be going on here.

Head on over to FishScam.com to get the background on this campaign. I'd be interested to read what y'all think of this.

Universities up their organic offerings

At about this time yesterday, students filling up their trays at the U.C. Berkeley salad bar realized something was missing: the carcinogens.

On Monday, the Cal campus debuted an organic salad bar at one of the student dining facilities. Though many schools are offering organic options these days, Berkeley is the first in the nation to have an officially certified organic salad bar, complete with separate prep facilities -- so as to save the organic shreds of lettuce from the indignity of mingling with the non-organic variety, of course.

And students are noticing the difference. Said one 19-year-old sophomore, "It's not just that it tasted different, but it felt different. It seemed more like lettuce, I guess." Dude ... deep.

Meanwhile, in a much colder and less, uh, surfer-dude-populated area of the country, the U. of Wisconsin-Madison became the latest collegiate body to join the Humane Society's campaign against factory farms. Along with more than 80 other schools, UW-Madison's Food Services has agreed to the "near-exclusive" use of organic, cage-free (or "cruelty free") eggs, improving the lives of some 3,000 egg-laying hens.

Some universities are doing even more to push organic -- they're educating future organic farmers: