industrial ag
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Time for the public to reinvest in food-system infrastructure
Want farmers market food to expand beynd niche status? We need to invest in infrastructure. Photo: Natalie Maynor, Flickr Creative CommonsWhen The New York Times invited me to participate in a “Room for Debate” forum on the infrastructure problem in agriculture, I wrote a 1400-word treatise (a Tolstoyan length in online-debate terms), before slashing it […]
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USDA Inspector General: meat supply routinely tainted with harmful residues
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ————- Oh, you wanted those burgers without harmful residues! Sorry, the USDA’s meat-inspection service can’t really help you on that score. Next time you’re at an eatery whose sourcing practices you don’t trust, avoid the veal. Skip the burger, too. […]
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Fred Kirschenmann, winner of NRDC’s Growing Green “Thought Leader” award
An April 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) announced the four winners of its second annual “Growing Green” awards, which honor leaders in the sustainable-food world. The four categories are “thought leader,” “producer,” business leader,” and “water steward.” Over the next few days, I’ll be interviewing the winners in each category. First up: Fred […]
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KFC: Who needs buns when a chicken-bacon-chicken sandwich will do?
The buns should have bread the writing on the wall: They’re nothing but the vehicle for Americans’ daily meat-to-mouth resuscitation. Which is why KFC said buh-bye to bread in order to shove even more gross industrial chicken Double Down hungry throats. KFC is shooting for a more manly vehicle for getting meat to the gullet, […]
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Why are we propping up corn production, again?
News flash: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a lousy product. As Tom Laskawy reported here Tuesday, a recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears […]
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The N of an era: America’s nitrogen dilemma — and what we can do about it
There are three things on which the mighty engine of U.S. agriculture depends: water, fuel, and synthetic nitrogen. Like water, nitrogen is elemental to life. It’s the essential building block of the plants we eat. Farmers remove it from the soil when they harvest the year’s crop, and they must replenish it for the following […]
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King Corn airs complaints about USDA
Obama’s ag policy has come under justifiable criticism from the sustainable food movement–see here and here–for its aggressive pro-biotechnology and pro-trade policies. But it has also managed to enrage industrial-ag interests, too, with its “Know your Farmer” program and other gestures toward alternative food. King Corn, it turns out, is a sensitive sovereign. Check this […]
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Smithfield tries to weave a silk purse from a sow’s ear
“Just this week I promoted somebody–and I can’t even believe I’m saying this word here, folks–to a chief sustainability officer.”—Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods, speaking before the North Carolina Agribusiness Council. Smithfield’s environmental record was nicely documented in the classic 2006 Rolling Stone article “Boss Hog.”
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New research: synthetic nitrogen destroys soil carbon, undermines soil health
Just precisely what does all of that nitrogen ferilizer do to the soil?“Fertilizer is good for the father and bad for the sons.”–Dutch saying For all of its ecological baggage, synthetic nitrogen does one good deed for the environment: it helps build carbon in soil. At least, that’s what scientists have assumed for decades. If […]