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  • Boss Hog’s attempted regulatory coup in North Carolina

    For the past two years, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has been crafting new rules to require water monitoring at factory hog farms, a significant source of pollution in the state. But last week, even with concerns growing over the environmental impacts of hog farms, the North Carolina Senate unanimously passed a bill that […]

  • Learning from past civilizations

    To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of […]

  • Big Ag not content with concessions in House climate bill

    The American Farm Bureau Federation, not content with the major concessions for agriculture that its congressional allies secured during the House climate debate, is now lobbying the Senate for a better deal. Appearing at a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday, Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman not only pushed for provisions […]

  • Farm City author cuts the foodie-elite snobbery from urban farming

    Food writer and urban farmer Novella Carpenter is everything the elitist, foodie stereotype is not: she squat-farms near downtown Oakland, Calif., dumpster-dives to feed her rabbits, and offers to show anyone who still thinks otherwise exactly “what urban farming smells like.” Novella Carpenter and cute baby animals today, dinner tomorrow.Photo: Courtesy of Novella CarpenterIn Seattle […]

  • Rethinking food production for a world of 8 billion

    In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has China ended its dependence on […]

  • Quiz: Should I see the critically acclaimed documentary ‘Food, Inc.’?

    A quiz, dear Grist reader, to determine if you should see the new documentary ‘Food, Inc.‘ (You start with 0 points. Total your points as you answer the questions.): Farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia.Photo: Food, Inc. Do you eat food? Yes, three-square meals a day. Add 1 million points. No, I’m not […]

  • Coleman’s elegant year-round vegetable production blueprint

    The June National Geographic features a story The End of Plenty which starts off saying that even though humans produced a record amount of grain last year, we still had to dip into stockpiles from past years to feed ourselves. Sobering stuff. But then for solutions it goes deep on the same tired green revolution […]