Colorado’s inmates-as-farmworkers plan says plenty about our food culture

Last summer, the Colorado General Assembly passed some of the nation’s most rigorous anti-immigrant policy laws. Debate was fierce — but only because some GOP lawmakers fumed that the Democratic-engineered crackdown wasn’t draconian enough. How times have changed. Essentially, the state’s political elite — backed editorially by The Denver Post — took aim at its […]

My address to the Southern Appalachian Youth on Food conference

One crop to rule them all. Photo: USDA Tucked into the rolling hills of North Carolina’s Swannanoa Valley, Warren Wilson College is essentially surrounded by a farm. The school’s 800 students not only tend the 275-acre farm — which includes pastured livestock and vegetables — they also provide the labor to run the campus. They […]

Uh, no it doesn’t

News flash: Coca-Cola has responded to consumer demand and is now producing “healthy” beverages. “Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands,” Coke’s CEO E. Neville Isdell told The New York Times. He was referring to a new product called Diet Coke Plus, which is Diet Coke plus a few vitamins. Where do […]

Seriously, isn’t it just gross?

Having adopted a quasi-vegetarian lifestyle, I can finally join in: man, you meat eaters suck! Ahem. Speaking of my quasi-vegetarianism … what’s the deal with soy sauce? I’ve found that eating vegetarian in practice means eating lots and lots of Mexican (rice and beans) and Chinese (rice and veggies) food. When it comes to the […]

Carry On My Wayward Gene

Kansas could see first commercial crop of human-gene-containing rice A California company is one step closer to growing rice that contains human genes on a commercial scale. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given a preliminary OK to a plan to sow 450 Kansas acres with the stuff this spring, with 2,750 more acres to […]

Reviving a much-cited, little-read sustainable-ag masterpiece

The real Arsenal of Democracy is a fertile soil, the fresh produce of which is the birthright of nations.— Sir Albert Howard, The Soil and Health Sir Albert Howard. Around 1900, a 27-year-old British scientist named Albert Howard, a specialist in plant diseases, arrived in Barbados, then a province of the British Empire. His charge […]

Could you do it?

Could you limit your food and bev choices to all organic or all fair trade? Or both? What would be left on your plate and (eek!) in your wallet? Two men (one a Seattle-based reporter and one a U.K.-based nonprofit organizer) recently took on food-related challenges to answer those very questions and bring attention to […]

Please?

Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web. Of mites and men (and bees) [Insert perfunctory “buzz” reference into lead:] Buzz about the collapse of domesticated honeybee populations hit the front page of the New York Times yesterday. The steep drop in bee numbers is alarming: A bee […]

A message from Kenya and Biopact

Over on the Biopact website -- probably the best website for up-to-date international news on bio-energy science and markets -- they have posted an interesting commentary, based on a BBC interview, on how small Kenyan farmers, Mr. Peter Ndivo and Mr. Samuel Mauthike, are affected by the confusion engendered by concepts such as "carbon footprints," "fair trade," and "food miles."

Biopact's message? Buy your vegetables and fruits locally, if you must, but please allow developing countries to supply your biofuels.

How Archer Daniels Midland cashes in on Mexico’s tortilla woes

Much has been made in the U.S. press about Mexico’s “tortilla crisis” — the recent spike in the price of its definitive corn-based flatbread. Media reports tend to focus blame on U.S. ethanol production, which has surged over the past year, causing the global price of corn to double. The situation stoked the food vs. […]