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agriculture

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    Earth Day reflections on food as an environmental issue

    Courtesy Stewart via Flickr Michael Pollan ended The Omnivore’s Dilemma with this line: “we eat by the grace of nature, not of industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.” Sustenance, it seems to me, has always been humanity’s most persistent and direct link to the […]

    Tom Philpott Climate & Energy

  • Vilsack makes an industry-friendly pick to head the school lunch program

    Processed junk … again? Photo: dancing chopsticks USDA chief Tom Vilsack has repeatedly said that improving child nutrition will be one of his priorities. One key place to start would be the National School Lunch Program. Because of miserly federal funding for ingredients and kitchen equipment, the cafeteria kitchens in our nation’s public schools have […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • Is ethanol’s Congressional free ride coming to an end?

    The Congressional Budget Office just released a paper looking critically at the relationship between ethanol, food prices and carbon emissions. But it gets better. The CBO blogged about it!Bedtime for corn ethanol?Photo: Big Grey Mare Most ethanol in the United States is produced from domestically grown corn, and the rapid rise in the fuel’s production […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Did Obama screw up ag subsidy reform?

    Over the weekend, the NYT detailed the trials and tribulations of the Obama administration’s attempts to trim farm subsidy payments of a certain size: Among the audacious proposals in President Obama’s budget was a plan to save more than $9.7 billion over a decade by putting strict limits on farm subsidies that are disbursed regardless […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Heirloom tomato debate

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that George Will keeps repeating his half truths to deny the degraded state of the climate, but what exactly Scientific American was thinking with this article about how heirloom tomatoes are “hardly diverse and are no more “natural” than grocery-store varieties” is a mystery to me. Except that sacred cows make the best hamburger, […]

    Erik Hoffner Food

  • Toward a less efficient and more robust food system

    Produce at a farmer’s market in North Carolina Courtesy RICHIR on Flickr Editor’s Note: This is a version of an address delivered before the High Country Local Food Summit on March 26, in Boone, N.C., organized by Appalachian State University’s Sustainable Development Department. The High Country is a three-county region in the mountains of western […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Every job can be green, part one

    Fortunately for your humble correspondent, Van Jones was so busy when the editors of the new book, Mandate for Change: Policies and leadership for 2009 and beyond, were looking for an author for their chapter about green jobs, that they turned to me instead.  This is part one of three posts that will serialize my […]

    Jon Rynn Technology

  • New climate legislation overlooks a major GHG source: industrial ag

    Like many others in the climate movement, I have been waiting for weeks (well, years actually) for broad and sweeping climate change legislation.  Back in January the economy captured Congressional attention and I knew global warming legislation would simply have to wait.  Finally, yesterday, Representatives Markey and Waxman introduced their “American Clean Energy and Security […]

    Meredith Niles Politics

  • The straight dope on local, organic weed

    Is it better to buy locally grown marijuana which may have been fed with chemicals, or organic hooch from far away?

    Lou Bendrick Food