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agriculture

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    USDA downplays own scientist’s research on ill effects of Monsanto herbicide

    Sure, the crops are genetically engineered to withstand Roundup; but what about the soil? What would happen if a USDA scientist discovered that one of the most commonly used pesticides on the planet with a reputation for having saved millions of tons of US soil from erosion was — rather than a soil savior — […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Haiti, U.S. ag policy reform, and Bill Clinton

    Bill Clinton speaks at the UN. What lessons has he learned about agriculture? Photo: United Nations Development ProgrammeWhat have Haiti’s recent calamities taught U.S. decision makers about foreign policy with regard to agriculture? Haiti imports nearly half of the food consumed there–and 80 percent of its rice, the national staple. In the past two years, […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Farm saved by community featured on CNN

    In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the Web. ——— Back in November, Grist’s own Bonnie Powell wrote a piece for the Ethicurean about the plight of Soul Food Farm, a Bay Area farm destroyed by a wildfire: Around 1:30 a.m. on the night of September 3, engineer-turned-chicken farmer Eric […]

    Tom Laskawy Technology

  • A view into the U.S. diet

    The above chart, created by the USDA, compares the food consumed by the average U.S. citizen (using “loss-adjusted food availability” data as a proxy for consumption) to Federal dietary recommendations. In other words, what Americans eat vs. what the federal government thinks we should be eating. According to this analysis, we eat something like 30 […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • How export-focused agriculture has failed everyone it was meant to help

    A recent Washington Post article documented the stark reality of Haiti’s non-existent agricultural infrastructure: Decades of inexpensive imports –especially rice from the U.S. — punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves. …Today Haiti depends on the outside world for nearly […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Watching the green screens at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C.

    HomegrownSpring and the Environmental Film Festival both burst into full bloom at the festival’s start in the Nation’s Capital last weekend. Eco-movie buffs, many having withstood record snowfalls in Washington, D.C., this winter, eschewed the beauty of the outdoors to watch the beauty of the outdoors indoors in the form of a wellspring of eco-conscious […]

    Jennifer Prediger Culture

  • Silicon Valley investors place bets on sustainable ag

    I attended an agriculture conference this week at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto. There were no pickup trucks in the BMW-packed parking lot, and few farmers with dirt under their fingernails could be found milling about the sleek hotel lobby. But the place was swarming with venture capitalists from some of Silicon Valley’s marquee […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • HFCS study authors defend work against attacks

    Photo: BoekeMarion Nestle, along with other nutritionists have joined the Corn Refiners Association in criticizing the recent Princeton study on High Fructose Corn Syrup. Indeed the very title of Nestle’s post on the subject — “HFCS makes rats fat?” — seems to question the well-established practice of using rats to test hypotheses regarding human nutrition. […]

    Tom Laskawy Culture

  • Witnessing the White House garden’s winter bounty

    In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. ————- The White House has released a new video documenting the drama of Snowmaggedon … and the White House garden: Despite two feet of snow, the White House garden managed to produce an impressive amount of lettuce, spinach, turnips, arugula, and […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics