food politics
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What the financial collapse can teach us about the food system
In a recent New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten published a lucid, entertaining essay on the financial collapse. Titled “The Death of Kings,” it focuses on the hedge-fund managers, stock gurus, and private-equity wizards who reaped billions from the credit bubble.Is Big Ag running the food system into the ground the same way Wall Street wrecked the […]
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Earth Day reflections on food as an environmental issue
Courtesy Stewart via Flickr Michael Pollan ended The Omnivore’s Dilemma with this line: “we eat by the grace of nature, not of industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.” Sustenance, it seems to me, has always been humanity’s most persistent and direct link to the […]
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Vilsack makes an industry-friendly pick to head the school lunch program
Processed junk … again? Photo: dancing chopsticks USDA chief Tom Vilsack has repeatedly said that improving child nutrition will be one of his priorities. One key place to start would be the National School Lunch Program. Because of miserly federal funding for ingredients and kitchen equipment, the cafeteria kitchens in our nation’s public schools have […]
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Locavores are ruining food and free range pork will kill us
Get thee to a CAFO!Photo: pubwvjIn a recent op-ed, in The New York Times gravely informed its readers that free-range pork is deadly stuff. Despite evidence that incidence of trichinosis is very rare in the US–about 40 cases a year, and mostly caused by eating wild game (usually bear)-James E. McWilliams says that pork laced […]
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Toward a less efficient and more robust food system
Produce at a farmer’s market in North Carolina Courtesy RICHIR on Flickr Editor’s Note: This is a version of an address delivered before the High Country Local Food Summit on March 26, in Boone, N.C., organized by Appalachian State University’s Sustainable Development Department. The High Country is a three-county region in the mountains of western […]
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Whole Foods [hearts] Chilean grapes
Photo taken in the produce section at Whole Foods Martet in Seattle, March 31, 2009.
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Food-movement doc screens March 28 in Emerald City; Philpott, Alice Waters to attend
So, I’m featured as a talking head in a documentary on the sustainable-food movement called Food Fight. Other folks who appear include Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Dan Barber. Food Fight will be screening this coming Saturday, March 28, 7 pm, in Seattle as part of Green Festival. I’ll be attending the screening, and moderating […]
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Using food as a tool of development, not extraction
When Michelle Obama plunged a shovel into the White House lawn last Friday, she wasn’t just preparing a productive vegetable-garden bed. She’s was also tilling fertile ground for debate about new directions for the food system. In the New York Times, Andrew Martin helpfully got the ball rolling in a recent piece called “Is a […]
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Michelle Obama to Oprah: There will be a White house veggie garden
It’s official, because it’s been etched in the pages of our most sacred national chronicle. No, not the Federal Register — I’m talking about O Magazine. Here’s the scoop: the Obamas will plant a veggie garden in the White House lawn. The First Lady of the United States told the Queen of the Universe as […]