agriculture

Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla chats about the promise of ethanol

Venture capitalist and ethanol booster Vinod Khosla. Billionaires are piling onto the biofuels bandwagon. Bill Gates is doing it. Richard Branson is doing it. The Google guys are doing it. Less well-known is the billionaire who kicked off the whole trend: Vinod Khosla, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and former partner with Kleiner Perkins, the […]

An interview with David Pimentel

Any worthy idea can withstand and even be improved by naysayers; scolds and skeptics play the useful role of pointing out obvious flaws. The biofuels industry has no more persistent, articulate, and scathing critic than David Pimentel, professor emeritus of entomology at Cornell University. David Pimentel. Photo: Chris Hallman / Cornell University Photography. In 1979, […]

A look at the impacts of biofuels production, in the U.S. and the world

Nothing but blue skies from now on? Photo: house.gov Great news! We can finally scratch “driving less” off our list of ways to curb global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil! Biofuels will soon not only replace much of our petroleum, but improve soil fertility and save the American farmer as well! Sound […]

Group lobbies Starbucks to cut the rBGH

Tired of being cowed into drinking milk laced with artificial growth hormones simply because you can't kick the latte habit? Find it udderly disgusting that the largest food and beverage retailers in the world proliferate antibiotics? Wish Grist would stop milking the cow-related puns?

Well, today you can join in with Food and Water Watch's Hold the Hormones campaign by calling Starbucks and asking them to stop buying milk from dairies that use artificial growth hormones. The D.C.-based nonprofit offers up 10 good reasons to get involved.

The numbers behind ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel in the U.S.

America devours oil like no other country in the world. Representing 5 percent of the global population, the country consumes fully a quarter of the world’s oil. Every year, to move ourselves and our goods around, we burn 140 billion gallons of gasoline and 40 billion gallons of diesel — enough to propel the average […]

Locally grown food shouldn’t be just for those with cash to spare

As a critic of the globalized industrial food system, I often face charges of elitism — in part, likely, because I neglect to acknowledge the system’s clear achievements. So here goes. In the mood for good food? Look no further than your backyard. Photo: iStockphoto In human history, few pampered Roman emperors or African kings […]

Winter veggies served with a labor shortage and a side of rocket fuel

Last summer, plenty of drama emanated from California's Salinas Valley, epicenter of industrial vegetable production (organic and otherwise) and self-proclaimed "nation's salad bowl."

The season began amid grumbles among growers about a labor shortage. To paraphrase their complaint: Not enough Mexican workers are sneaking across the border, and ones who are are drawn into higher-paying construction jobs.

The season ended in an ignominious nationwide E. coli outbreak that killed three people and sickened hundreds of others.

About this time each year, industrial vegetable production shifts to Arizona's Yuma County, source of 90 percent of winter vegetables in the U.S. and (gasp) 98 percent of its iceberg lettuce. Let the drama begin.

The U.S. organic cotton industry has a tough row to hoe

The view from the Panoche Cotton Gin outside Firebaugh, Calif., reveals a great deal about the state of the cotton industry in the U.S. A generation ago, fields of cotton surrounded the gin as far as the eye could see. Today, the gin — a warehouse-sized plant that can clean and bundle dozens of tons […]

What the Democrats’ win means for the sustainable-food movement

After being sentenced to death on specious grounds in 1915, the pro-union agitator and singer Joe Hill delivered a bracing message to his supporters: “Don’t waste time mourning, organize!” The bums may be gone, but don’t get too giddy. Photo: iStockphoto Under more celebratory circumstances, Hill’s formulation doesn’t seem quite right; after helping purge so […]