Big Ag
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Male-dominated Big Ag woos women with paternalistic marketing blitz
Marketing campaigns aside, the face of industrial-scale farming is male. Big Ag is big business — and big profits. And when anyone raises questions about the billions of tax dollars lavished on the largest industrial growers of corn, soybeans, and other commodity crops or points out the harm that these perverse incentives do to the […]
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The 'Troubled Waters' of Big Ag’s academic influence
Under pressure from Big Ag, the University of Minnesota postponed the release of a film about agriculture's effect on U.S. waterways. The story of Troubled Waters has developed into a critical debate on academic freedom and the role a university’s donors should play in its research priorities.
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Vote for your favorite villains of food
Grist is rooting out the companies and characters keeping America sick, fat and poisoned. Vote for your Public Food Enemy No 1, and help us take them on
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What Monsanto’s fall from grace reveals about the GMO seed industry
Once the darling of Wall Street and the Darth Vader of the agribiz universe, Monsanto has fallen on hard times. The reason may have to do with the essentially over-hyped nature of GMO technology.
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Obama taps food-industry exec for top ag-research post
Obama has nominated Catherine Woteki, an exec from the Mars candy corporation, to direct the U.S. government's entire agricultural research budget.
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One super-toxic chemical down, thousands more to go
Last week, and capping at least a decades-long battle by consumer advocates, the EPA announced a ban on the pesticide endosulfan — one of the last legal organochlorine pesticides, a notorious group of which DDT is a member. Horrifically toxic (possibly more toxic to humans than DDT) and banned in the European Union since 2007, […]
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New safety guidelines for poultry producers won’t change much
(USDA photo) If you’ve ever fallen ill with a case of food poisoning, Big Food would like you to know that it’s probably your fault. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued new safety compliance guidelines for the poultry industry. They’re notable for several reasons: they drastically reduce the allowable levels of […]
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Ask Umbra’s Book Club: Time to take action
Dearest readers, Photo: GreenpeaceThanks so much for all your foodie insights this week related to Anna Lappé’s Diet for a Hot Planet (if you missed the live chat with her, catch the replay). One more big question to tackle today. Let’s brainstorm some ideas about how to put the pressure on agribusiness offenders. In the […]
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What’s in your food that’s destroying orangutans?
Photo: Wikimedia Commons.Have you bought soap in the past week? How about lipstick? Cheerios? Soy milk? Today, a new report reveals that the nation’s largest private agribusiness company — Minneapolis-based Cargill — is a major culprit behind rainforest destruction. It turns out that Cargill, who both owns their own palm oil plantations and buys and […]
