Independent report calls for major reforms to industrial animal farming

Photo: FarmSanctuary.org Industrial animal farming in the United States needs to make many major reforms in order to protect public health and the environment, an independent two-and-a-half-year study by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has concluded. The report criticized the widespread use of antibiotics to promote animal growth, […]

Let’s raze more Amazon rainforest!

Blairo Maggi is a powerful man in Brazil. He owns a company called Grupo Andre Maggi that runs vast soybean plantations in the state of Matto Grasso, which straddles the Amazon rainforest and what the Nature Conservancy calls “the world’s most biologically rich savanna.” The New York Times has called Maggi “the largest soybean grower […]

Ousted L.A. gardeners continue to farm

In June 2006, a land dispute led to the shutdown of the South Central Community Garden in Los Angeles. Weeks of protest and tree-sitting by celebrities and regular folk proved unfruitful, and the 14-acre garden, tended by 350 low-income families in the middle of one of L.A.’s poorest neighborhoods, was bulldozed. Nearly two years later, […]

A gap between rich and poor makes free markets fail

It's really an absurd travesty when starvation gets blamed on "global warming do-gooders," and we haven't seen the last of that. The problem is miscast, though. There isn't a food shortage, at least not yet. There is a food price crisis, which is a very different beast.

Are its roots in the huge resource gap between the relatively rich and the very poor? If that's true, it has broad implications.

Here's one way of looking at it, from the Omaha World-Herald:

Food vs. fuel edition

“To say that biofuels are the culprit [for food-price hikes] clearly underestimates the demand [for food] and really shows a gross misunderstanding of the world food situation.” — Bill Doyle, CEO Potash Corp, the world’s largest fertilizer company, which has seen its share price rise 600 percent in the past two years, quoted April 24 […]

Contact your legislators and take action on the sorry state of the industrial food system

Everyone should take some interest in what they eat and how it is grown. Mostly people think about the price of food, and that is important (unless they make plenty of money, and then it doesn't really matter; they can buy whatever they want). The poor often have little choice: they buy what is available and what they can afford -- and lately they can't afford to buy much. Studies show that given the choice, low-income people would choose to buy fresh, locally grown food, but they seldom have that choice.

What’s causing the sudden run-up in food prices?

A lot of people are wondering what the hell is going on with food prices. Rice, dollars per ton Source: Reuters The price of bulk rice on global markets has tripled since the start of the year, school children in some of the world’s poorest nations are losing access to school-lunch programs, and people in […]

Bay Area escapes aerial spraying, for now

A plan to spray Santa Cruz County with synthetic pheromones must be postponed until an environmental review is completed, a county judge ruled Thursday. The spraying, an attempt by agriculture officials to curb the invasion of the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth, was to begin in Santa Cruz County in June and expand to seven […]

How Congress is shortchanging our health and sweetening things for the food industry

Are we becoming children of the corn, thanks in part to large subsidies and overproduction?

Photo: NREL/Warren Gretz

At dinner Sunday night, I asked my friend Prasad if he knew about the new farm bill and what it means for average Americans. He didn't.

I wasn't surprised. With the election, the war, and rising prices to fret about, not many people are pondering legislation about farms. But they should, because it has huge implications for the country's nutrition, environment, and health. Here are three reasons why we all should pay closer attention to the 2007 farm bill: food, fuel, and fat.

First, some background.

Linguistic insights into agriculture

One of the problems people have discussing sustainable agriculture is the question of language. I was trained originally in English literature and hold as an article of faith that language matters -- deeply. That is, I believe that we can only come to an honest vision for the future with a shared language that accurately describes our world.

Agriculture is in the news, obviously -- and the future of farming is a big question. But we keep running up against the question of what, precisely, a farm is. There's a lot of debate about where our farmers should come from, where they will grow, and who we will count as a farmer. Often, I find, even those who believe in the future of local food systems are talking past each other.

That is, when we talk about "farmers," who are we actually talking about? What's "agriculture" and what's "gardening"? Where does "homesteading," "smallholding," "horticulture," and "subsistence farming" fall in the mess? Yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about suburban farmers is inspiring -- and it further enhances the need for a shared public language of agriculture.