agriculture

The Onion on GM tomatoes

From The Onion: PASADENA, CA–Geneticists at the California Institute of Technology announced Monday that they have developed a tomato with a 31 percent larger price tag than a typical specimen of the vine-ripened fruit. “By utilizing an exciting new breakthrough in gene-splicing technology, we’ve been able to manipulate this new tomato with recombinant DNA in […]

A new generation pilots the farm’s operations as it transitions to training others

Some Grist readers may have noticed that I’ve been writing on the blog nearly every day, while keeping up the Victual Reality column. How can I do all of that and farm, too? The truth is, I went full-time at Grist last November, when I took on the position of food editor. And to maintain […]

South America’s industrial-ag powerhouse eyes rainforest potash deposits

I’ve been writing for a while about industrial agriculture’s fertilizer problem — about how mass-scale food (and biofuel) production relies on finite, geopolitically problematic, and environmentally destructive resources to maintain soil fertility. (See posts here, here, and here.) Well, that story is heating up down in Brazil, an increasingly important hub in the global industrial […]

Much depends on finding a new generation to put dinner on the table

Every time I come in from my farm fields and tune into the news these days, the headline is about food: food prices, food scares, food shortages, food riots. Food has America's attention these days, but folks are overlooking a critical piece of the brewing crisis: a national shortage of farmers.

We farmers make up a mere 1.6 percent of the U.S. population right now. Picture an inverted pyramid balanced precariously on its nose: that's our national food supply, with about 3 million of us feeding three hundred million of you. In food terms, our nation resembles an elephant perched on a pair of stiletto heels.

McCain thunders against ag subsidies, vows fealty to trade agenda

Speaking before the National Restaurant Association on Monday, John McCain delivered a stirring rant against agriculture subsidies and the latest farm bill (text here.) No doubt burnishing his "maverick" image among editorial writers, the senator lambasted the bill as a giveaway of "billions of dollars in subsidies to some of the biggest and richest agribusiness […]

An alternative to global industrial agriculture

At the conclusion to an article on the global food crisis, Walden Bello discusses an idea put forward by an international farmer's group, Via Campesina:

‘Science’: nitrogen as important as carbon in climate change

Speaking of the troubles associated with industrial agriculture and its fertilizer regime, check this out: The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the […]

I loathe the farm bill but can’t bring myself to accept the Bush administration’s party line

People keep asking me what I think about the new farm bill — the one that will soon likely become law, since both houses of Congress passed it with majorities that would withstand Bush’s threatened veto. I hate it; it fails utterly to make the investments we need to rebuild local and regional food systems […]

Why that organic label on your milk doesn’t tell the whole story

Tastes great, but who’s paying the health-care bills? As a writer, one of my goals is to demystify farming for non-farmers — to remind people that their food comes from somewhere, grown by someone, often drawing down finite resources. Less than 2 percent of Americans farm, yet all of us eat. Whether you’re scarfing a […]