agriculture

Good farm policies support good farm practices

Interest in the Farm Bill is usually confined to policy wonks and agribusiness lobbyists, but this year it has generated more buzz than a cowpie in a June paddock.

Despite the stir, most of the public attention has been narrowly focused on only one aspect of the $280 billion policy package: the farm payments paid to corn, soybean, wheat, rice, and cotton producers. Though concerns over the current commodity programs are well-founded, their emphasis has given a negative cast to the Farm Bill debate: we should be against farm subsidies.

But there are also things worth fighting for in the Farm Bill -- conservation programs that promote environmental enhancement, sustain family farms, and support rural communities are some of them.

On accepting invitations from strangers, and a harvest festival

A few years ago, I heard an actor say on a talk show that he had decided if someone invited him to a party, he was going to attend, whether he knew the person or not. When I repeated that to my friend Pagan Kennedy a few days later, she responded, “That’s great! That should […]

Community food projects empowering low-income residents

Food is turning up everywhere, and I don't mean on your plate. For the past year, journalists and authors have stuck on the topic like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth, and what's especially notable is the focus on policy solutions and the Farm Bill. Articles are so numerous that as I started to compile them, I realized that I could spend a whole post just linking to them (find a few here).

As I contemplate the impact of our farm and food policy on the environment, how to reduce food miles, and the impact of our diet on global warming, I am also aware that local food is often perceived as elitist. Healthy and local food is often more expensive because farmers are taking care of their workers and the land, but it still needs to be accessible to everyone, both in regards to price and where consumers can buy healthy local food. One way that the Farm Bill can impact the ability of all people to eat locally is to fund programs that help connect low-income consumers to farmers, or in some cases to the land itself.

While industrial agriculture fouls the Mississippi, the EPA cowers in the corner

Industrial agriculture thrives on its ability to skulk away from — or, to use economist’s argot, "externalize" — the costs of its considerable ecological messes. Often, it does so with the tacit approval of the federal government, in direct violation of federal law. In Iowa, for example, the state’s 2,100 CAFOs (confined-animal feedlot operations) regularly […]

A frustrated resident speaks out

The following letter was mailed anonymously to Marian Kuper, whom we featured in last week’s “A Tale of Two Counties.” She shared it with Tom Philpott so we could give readers a sense of the frustrations brewing in CAFO country. We welcome responses from other perspectives. I know that others still believe the United States […]

Time to think about the global food system

An excellent article, "The Globalization of Hunger," appears over at the Madre website on the absurdities (as in moving food all over the globe) and injustices (kicking people off their land so agribusiness can grow exportable crops) of the global agricultural system.

How the nation’s breadbasket is poisoning its own water supply

In late September, the corn and soybean fields of the lower Missouri River floodplain are a lovely dull brown, nearly ready for harvest. The row crops sprawl as far as the eye can see, their regimental march broken only by levees, gravel roads, the occasional band of cottonwoods, and the endless tracks of the Burlington […]

A wonderful dinner celebrating Fergus Henderson at Manhattan’s Savoy

Fergus Henderson Photo: Savoy. To certain vegans — the sort who recently saw fit to flay a chef who supports small farmers in the middle of Iowa (see comments below Kurt Michael Friese’s wonderful piece in Grist) — Fergus Henderson will be an object of derision. Feeling "a little dented”? Henderson would prescribe a bit […]

An interview with sustainable-food advocate Diane Hatz

Ever dreamed of eating your way across the country? This summer, Diane Hatz did just that on the Eat Well Guided Tour of America. Convinced there was more to the sustainable-food movement than met the eye (i.e., it ain’t just happening on the coasts), Hatz and her colleagues from Sustainable Table partnered with several other […]