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agriculture

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    Biochar as the new black gold

    Special Series: What’s the deal with offsets?Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristImagine a system that can: (potentially) store billions of tons of carbon in soil for centuries; dramatically reduce agricultural waste, forest debris and some municipal solid waste, thus eliminating the production of greenhouse gases that result from their decomposition; generate energy to both […]

    Bill Hewitt Climate & Energy

  • The obvious advantage of organic food over conventional

    A bit of nitrogen with those veggies? A recent literature review [PDF] by the U.K. Food Standards Agency concluded that organic foods offer no nutritional advantages to ones grown with conventional chemical agriculture. The report quickly bounced around the media and the internets and has congealed into received wisdom. For example, in a recent chat […]

    Tom Philpott Culture

  • The thread on which civilization hangs

    “Number one is that it [industrial agriculture] destroys soil. Absolutely and completely. The soil is the only thread upon which civilization can exist, and it’s such a narrow strip around the globe if a person could ever realize that our existence depends on literally inches of active aerobic microbial life on terra firma, we might […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Cash for … other things!

    So Congress approved and President Obama signed an extension of the hugely popular (and not-really-so-green) cash-for-clunkers program. Woohoo! We can think of some better “Cash for …” programs the government should be funding … Cash for computers—Think of the power savings. Not to mention the peace of a Twitter-free life. Cash for cookies—Your sweet tooth […]

    Grist staff Technology

  • Ask Umbra on livestock and water

    Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Why is it eating less beef can save water? In addition, if we skip meat to save water, will that affect our health? Besides beef, what other food or drinks use a lot of water to produce and process? Thanks!Jocey A. Dearest Jocey, Wow, you meat-eaters sure […]

    Ask Umbra® Culture

  • Boss Hog’s attempted regulatory coup in North Carolina

    For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state. But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that […]

    Sue Sturgis Politics

  • Learning from past civilizations

    To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of […]

    Lester Brown Uncategorized

  • On the origin of ‘superweeds’ and the chemical treadmill

    “There is no telling how many articles I have written with the theme of ‘Roundup every Monday morning until there is nothing out there but soybeans’ or ‘the best tank mix partner with Roundup is more Roundup.’ That made soybean farming so easy that even I could probably have done it.”—Ford L. Baldwin of Arkansas-based […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Dow Agrosciences: farm like there’s no tomorrow!

    “If you’re going to farm a piece of land, you ought to farm it for all its worth.”–Tim Hassinger, commercial vice president at Dow AgroSciences, quoted in an AP story called “Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture.”

    Tom Philpott Food