Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Schoolhouse Rocks
Public Schools Starting to Offer Organic Lunches Healthy, organic food is increasingly popping up in, of all strange places, school lunches. The Seattle school district recently banned junk food and exclusive soda contracts (despite the big dollars dangled by soda companies) and started urging schools to offer “fresh, local, organic, non-genetically-modified, non-irradiated, unprocessed food, whenever […]
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Cornographic
European Union Gives Go-Ahead to GM Corn In a highly symbolic move, the European Union yesterday approved the first genetically modified seeds for planting and sale across E.U. territory, outraging greens and defying public opinion (70 percent of E.U. citizens oppose GM food). The European Commission approved 17 varieties of GM corn developed by U.S. […]
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A Bunch of Debunk
Debate Over Benefits of Organic Food Heats Up The market for organic food is exploding, and as any star of teen movies can tell you, with success comes backlash. Some of the organic-food industry’s more enthusiastic backers have made lofty claims about the health benefits the foods confer, and now some scientists (and some industry-backed […]
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If We Weren’t Already Fireproof, This Would Burn Us Up
Flame Retardants Found in Many Grocery-Store Foods A new study of grocery items like fish, meat, and dairy products revealed that virtually all of them contain detectable levels of PBDEs, human-made chemical fire retardants used in carpeting, electronics, and furniture that may or may not cause cancer. (We’ll get to the “may or may not” […]
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Yes, We Have Mo’ Bananas
Australians Kick Some Renewable-Energy Butt Those Australians are busy bees these days! One team of Aussie researchers has announced that within seven years it will be able to produce hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water, in a process that has no moving parts and produces no pollutants. “This is potentially huge, with a market the […]
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Umbra on organic syrup
Dear Umbra, I saw at the store there is “organic” maple syrup. Is there really a difference between organic and non-organic maple syrup? Do conventional farms spray the trees with massive amounts of pesticides? I don’t have much money (poor college student) so I was just trying to buy organic for things like apples and […]
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Umbra on hydroponic farming
Dear Umbra, What are the advantages of hydroponics, and if it is so good, why isn’t it used more? LukeMitchellville, Iowa Dearest Luke, Plants take up most of their nutrients through their roots, despite all we learned in elementary school about leaves making food from the sun. Soil is a complex conglomeration of minerals, nutrients, […]
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Umbra on genetically modified foods
Dear Umbra, Is most of the genetically modified food that makes its way into our grocery aisles really that harmful? It seems to me that the process of genetic modification is not that far from hybridizing and other tinkering processes that we’ve come to accept. Judi Boston, Mass. Dearest Judi, We don’t know, and that’s […]
