Department of Agriculture

USDA considers first-ever organic standards for farmed fish

You may have seen "organic salmon" on the menu in your favorite seafood restaurant or counter. Guess what? It's not organic, according to the USDA. It turns out that some fishmongers have been promoting their fish as organic with definitions of their own.

This week, a USDA advisory panel will consider a key element of the country's first-ever standards for "organic" farmed fish, including salmon. The surprising news is that this standard -- if adopted -- could be a boon for both seafood consumers and conservation.

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 […]

Three million more acres of industrial corn?

According to USDA projections, U.S. farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008. At any time in the last 50 years, that would be plenty. Since 1958, USDA figures tell us, farmers have broken 80 million acres only ten times. In fact, if farmers meet expectations, 2008 will rank as the second-largest planting […]

As food prices rise, policymakers ignore potential of home and community gardens

This originally aired on WSHU Public Radio in Fairfield, Conn.

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"Gardens are viewed as 'hobbies' by most politicians/bureaucrats and administrators and are seldom taken seriously as real sources of real food," says a University of Connecticut agricultural extension specialist, speaking of the United States Department of Agriculture. This attitude represents a serious impediment to a healthy, and sustainable food supply and society.

Feeding a growing population with shrinking resources without polluting the planet is one of the greatest challenges facing us, locally and globally. The USDA is the world's largest agricultural research and extension organization. If it doesn't take gardens seriously as "real sources of real food," we are in real trouble.

Although we know that organic food sales are growing at over 20 percent annually, the USDA hasn't collected statistics on organic farms. In Connecticut, there are about 40 certified organic farms, which, like many of the farms in this country, tend to be small and part-time. They probably produce and sell less than a million dollars worth of produce a year.

But there is also an abundance of vegetables and fruits produced in home and community organic gardens. A skilled home gardener can produce amazing quantities of food using only hand tools, compost from kitchen and yard wastes, and human energy.

The more than 20,000 subscribers to Organic Gardening magazine here in Connecticut provide a rough estimate of the scale of organic food being produced in gardens for home consumption. Although some subscribers may not have gardens, that number is probably offset by organic gardeners who don't purchase the magazine.

Corn hits a new record — $6 a bushel

At the end of February, I blogged on a Fortune article that had the subhead "The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike." That article noted:

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

Just six weeks later, we have an AP article with the subhead "Corn Prices Jump to Record $6 a Bushel, Driving Up Costs for Food, Alternative Energy."

And it gets better worse:

Time bashes grain ethanol

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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All that glitters is not gold. And all that grows is not green.

That is the belated realization about grain ethanol -- in fact, about any ethanol whose feedstock is grown on cropland. Joe Romm has done a good job posting on this issue, including his report on the recent studies featured in Science magazine. I'd like to weigh in with a few additional points.

USDA head suggests harvesting switchgrass on conservation land

Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said Tuesday that it would be a “great idea” to allow farmers to grow and harvest biofuel-bound switchgrass on land currently set aside as wildlife habitat. More than 34 million acres in the U.S. are in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners to convert cropland to native grasses […]

A view behind the scenes at the EPA and the White House

It is now less than four weeks until the EPA announces its decision on whether to change current national standards for ozone or smog. And things are getting very interesting behind the scenes.

Officially, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget website, the EPA has not yet transmitted its plan to the White House for review. The truth is, the EPA is obviously being picked at by the OMB already.

The Bush administration is just trying to keep the details of this matter as secret as possible. (Some business lobbyists have heard that the EPA is pushing a tougher new standard, though weaker than that recommended by their science advisers.)

Despite the efforts at secrecy, some information is creeping out as EPA puts information in its official regulatory docket. (You can see this for yourself here by searching for docket number EPA-HQ-OAR-2005-0172. )

A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz

Industrial agriculture lost one of its greatest champions last week: Earl “Rusty” Butz, secretary of the USDA under Nixon. Blustering, boisterous, and often vulgar, Butz lorded over the U.S. farm scene at a key period. He plunged a pitchfork into New Deal agricultural policies that sought to protect farmers from the big agribusiness companies whose […]