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  • What to make of the Pollan/Schlosser agreement with Wendy’s?

    UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day! As a food politics commenter, I get paid to have strong opinions on the issues of the day. This ass will be eating grass?racineur via FlickrBut this one’s got me flummoxed. First, fast-food giant Wendy’s rolls out its new “pasture on a bun” burger, made with “100% grass-fed beef.” That […]

  • Still another critic of real food – this time in the NYT

    In Sunday’s New York Times, Damon Darlin has now weighed into a debate which I am suddenly making a career of noticing, that of publicly lambasting locavores. Normally a tech writer (and perhaps better suited to it), Darlin has wheeled out some of the same tired points that others have recently, making them officially clichéd. […]

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    Michael Pollan video on Democracy Now

    In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. ————- Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interviewed Michael Pollan yesterday. You may think you’ve heard all that Pollan’s got to say, as many interviews that he does. But Amy’s a great interviewer–she enforces a “no sound bites” policy–and the converation gets really […]

  • Pollan on ‘The Daily Show’

    [vodpod id=Video.16083146&w=425&h=350&fv=] As health care, finance, and climate bills lurch through Congress, buffeted and compromised by the very industries they seek to rein in, the question of whether our political system is actually capable of real reform arises. Could it be that corporate lobbies are so powerful that current dysfunctions are entrenched? Are we doomed […]

  • A new direction on research at the USDA?

    Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack gave a speech on the role of research at the USDA at the launch of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the research arm of that agency formerly referred to as the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES). Vilsack had this to say in […]

  • Can you taste the fuels in your food?

    Amanda Little on the farm. If you pinned a map of the United States to a dartboard, Kansas would be the bull’s-eye. Smack dab in the center of the country, the Sunflower State is one of America’s most productive agricultural hotbeds — the fifth-biggest producer of crops and livestock in the country. More than 90 […]

  • Big Ag’s odd obsession with You-Know-Who

    I really really really didn’t want to write another post on Michael Pollan. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a big fan. It’s just that reducing the whole of the food movement to Pollan’s work naturally ignores so much else that’s going on. But don’t blame me for this post. Blame Big Ag. These guys […]

  • Pollan shoots down organic myths at Grist event

    Michael Pollan (left) and Tom Philpott talk food.Celebrated food and ag author Michael Pollan debunked some myths about organic agriculture Tuesday night at a Grist event in San Francisco, in a conversation with Grist food writer Tom Philpott and the audience. In response to a question about whether we can really feed the world without […]

  • Why are (some) farmers afraid of Michael Pollan?

    Author Michael Pollan is no stranger to controversy. He has broadened the discussion of what we eat, where and how it is grown, big vs. small, organic farming vs. conventional. When he speaks some in the audience will love him, some will not. Advocates of large scale agriculture see Pollan as the enemy, they believe […]