grist-georgia-psc-header-ai

agriculture

  • The GMO seed giant expects Roundup to generate $1.8 billion in profits in 2008

    Monsanto positions itself as a green company. “Using the tools of modern biology,” its website informs us, “we help farmers grow more yield sustainably so they can produce more and conserve more.” Compare that twaddle to this bit from Monsanto’s announcement on Tuesday: [Monsanto’s Chief Financial Officer Terry] Crews will indicate that Monsanto’s Roundup® and […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Why climate change may have more to do with your shopping cart than your car

    Anna Lappé might be called a green-diaper baby. Her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, brought out the seminal Diet for a Small Planet back in 1971, and has been agitating forcefully for a just, sustainable food system ever since. Her father, the toxicologist Marc Lappé, was an early, important, and persistent critic of the agrichemical industry. […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • The key political, economic, and cultural needs of young farmers

    This piece is co-authored by Severine von Tscharner Fleming, 27, director of The Greenhorns and farmer/activist in the Hudson Valley of New York. —– Coast to coast, though there are thousands inspired to dig in and grow food, but it is currently only a dauntless few who manage to gain access to the land, capital, […]

    Zoe Bradbury Food

  • Everglades restoration deal could still benefit Big Sugar

    When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced in June that the state would buy 187,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar Corp. to “jump start” an Everglades restoration effort, environmentalists cheered visions of flowing, fresh water and pristine, untouched habitat. But that may not turn out to be exactly the case. Crist initially said he would […]

    Grist staff Technology

  • The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science

    In 2002, a most unlikely book came out: an oversized, lushly produced, coffee-table tome on the ills of mass-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture. Grandly titled Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, the book contained stark photos of highly mechanized, monocrop farming, along with pungent, probing essays by Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and other seminal thinkers of […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • New data show that 2008 organic food sales will reach $32.9 billion

    As people from Haiti to Ethiopia are tragically struggling to cope with rising food prices, many are piecing together the reasons behind our recent price spikes. The culprits lie in everything from the switch to growing crops for biofuels to market speculation. The situation is complex and involves multiple factors. But as economists tally up […]

    Meredith Niles Food

  • Two trends for bakeries, one encouraging and one dismal

    It’s hard to imagine a vibrant local-food economy without a vibrant bakery scene. The capacity to efficiently turn something as bland as flour into something delicious and substantial seems key. In energy terms, baking several hundred loaves of bread a day in a commercial operation makes more sense than every family cranking out a loaf […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • We need some qualified public leaders

    It strikes me that many of the problems we run into on a daily basis are caused by people doing a job for which they are not fully qualified. At the top of the list, I’m afraid we must place those we elect to office and those they appoint to government service positions. We have […]

    Jim Goodman Politics

  • Natural foods giant agrees to penny-per-pound raise for farmworkers

    I reported a few days ago that a deal was imminent; now it’s official: Whole Foods has signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra penny-per-pound for Florida tomatoes. The raise will go directly into the pockets of some of the lowest-paid workers in the United States. In addition, the […]

    Tom Philpott Technology