Jeremy Cherfas’s Recent Comments

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  Thanks Meredith. I was thinking about transport on roads -- the food miles, if you like.The non-road vehicles is a bonus, I suppose.

  On New climate legislation overlooks a major GHG source: industrial ag posted 7 months ago 21 Responses

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  Excellent article. Thanks

  Can someone familiar with the bill tell me whether the transport associated with agriculture is subject to cap or not?

  On New climate legislation overlooks a major GHG source: industrial ag posted 7 months ago 21 Responses

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  Agreed, but

  Both of your suggestions make excellent sense, and I do hope that they are taken heed of not just in affluent countries but also in the developing world.

  The big problem for strictly local growing, though, is calories. Good nutrition is probably better supplied locally in almost all cases. But the calories needed to do the heavy lifting of nutrition may be better grown further away. and even after internalising all the external costs of transport and the like, on a level playing field it may still make economic sense for people (and countries) to buy major cereal grains from elsewhere while supplementing that with local products for healthy nutrition.On Sen. Grassley: Screw conservation, let's grow more corn! posted 1 year, 4 months ago 33 Responses

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  It isn't the O that matters

  it is the entire scale of the system. If you mix produce -- any produce -- in large warehousing and packing operations then you allow cross contamination. If you speed up the processes, because it is more profitable, then you allow cross contamination. doesn't matter whether you are certified organic or not.

  It isn't as if farmers actually smear feces on the tomatoes, which is what you would like us to think.

  There is contamination via water and via soil, and the best guarantee of safe produce is to buy from people who grow as if they will have to eat it themselves.
  On Now's the time for scapes and green garlic posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

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  Of course, it depends where you are starting from

  Yes, you're right, the local farmers are less productive than the intensive farmers on the flat lands, with the high-potential varieties, the fertilizers and pesticides and the irrigation. But that's a really unfair comparison. Nothing would ever make them even close in simply measured productivity.

  The good news in that article, for me, was that they are 3 to 4 times more productive than they were 20 years ago. That is making it possible to stay on the land and to be somewhat insulated from market prices for maize.

  I suspect we are in total agreement, and that we barely begin to know how to measure "productivity".
  On I loathe the farm bill but can't bring myself to accept the Bush administration's party line posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses