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agriculture

  • Starting today the FDA will allow producers to use irradiation on lettuce and spinach

    The better part of this summer seemed to be dotted with stories of continued salmonella and E. coli outbreaks. First, the FDA thought the problem was with tomatoes; but, it turns out peppers were the culprits that caused more than 1,400 people in 43 states to become sick with salmonella Saintpaul. This marks yet another […]

    Meredith Niles Food

  • Pharma giant Lilly snaps up Posilac for ‘at least’ $300 million

    A week or so ago, commenting on news that Monsanto was looking to unload its much-despised bovine-growth-hormone business, I offered this nugget of wisdom: Whatever company buys it probably won’t have Monsanto’s deep pockets. Hmmm. What’s that word again? Oh, yeah — W-R-O-N-G. (Hat tip to Jill of La Vida Locavore.) Today, Monsanto announced that […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • Putting cow hormones into fish food makes them balloon

    Update [2008-8-22 13:20:9 by Tom Philpott]:I was alerted to the rBGH-tilapia news item by this blurb in the Organic Consumers Association news feed on Aug. 19. But when you click on the link provided by OCA, you’re taken to a source dated 2003. Unlike reader Mr. Mean, who (very cordially) comments below, I sloppily didn’t […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Now that farmers have gotten big or gotten out, it’s up to alternative farmers

    In “Dispatches From the Fields,” Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America’s agro-industrial landscape. —– Since the early 1970s, if not before, U.S. farm policy has hinged on the mantra, “get big or […]

    Grist staff Food

  • Australia continues to deal with epic drought

    Longstanding drought has wreaked havoc across Australia, drying up lakes into shallow, acidic puddles and threatening drinking-water supplies. Unable to coax rain from the sky, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has fast-tracked a plan to buy back water entitlements from the heaviest irrigators in the Murray-Darling basin, an agricultural stronghold which produces all of the country’s […]

    Grist staff Climate & Energy

  • Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops

    The British royal family is no stranger to controversy and media attention, but Prince Charles caused a new kind of worldwide media flurry on Tuesday when he sat down for an exclusive interview with the Telegraph (U.K.). This time around, though, it seems unlikely the media story will be covered by the British tabloids since […]

    Meredith Niles Food

  • In Arkansas, a new GMO/herbicide solution to a problem created by an old one

    I’ve written a couple of times about the rise “superweeds” in the Southeast and mid-South. In Arkansas, horseweed and Palmer amaranth now choke fields planted with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready cotton and soy — engineered to withstand heavy doses of Roundup, Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide. Fifteen years ago, horseweed and amaranth weren’t problem weeds. </p Back in […]

    Tom Philpott Technology

  • The food system as ‘largest quasi-public utility in the world’

    Apropos of the recent debate on Gristmill sparked by James Galbraith’s polemic on free markets, I got to thinking about something I recently read in Paul Roberts’ book The End of Food (which I reviewed here): [D]uring the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Congress created a vast system of of support for food production: a […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • What it means to put 4.1 billion bushels of corn into our gas tanks

    The USDA just raised its projection for how much corn it expects the ethanol industry to burn through this year by 150 million bushels. It now expects a total of 4.1 billion bushels of corn to be turned into liquid fuel.  That’s about double the amount of corn that went to ethanol in 2006 (2.1 […]

    Tom Philpott Food