Michelle Obama

White House loads policy initiatives into a few hours of fun at Healthy Kids Fair 0
Posted 1 month ago The autumn sunshine was very bright, the weather unseasonably warm, and there was a party atmosphere at the White House for Wednesday’s Healthy Kids Fair. The fun side of the the Healthy Kids Fair was reported by mainstream media. But the event couldn’t have been more serious.
battle royal

Is Michelle Obama about to take on Big Food? 40
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago While the First Lady has been exercising what diplomats would call her "soft power" for a while, i.e. planting a garden, making speeches on healthy eating, and so on, indications are that she's quietly developing a set of policy recommendations to reform the food system.
GMO job--or new food paradigm?

Another Monsanto man in a key USDA post? Obama’s ag policy’s giving me whiplash 20
Posted 2 months ago With new ag appointments, the Obama administration's food/ag policy keeps zigzagging between progressive change and the agrichemical status quo.
Market rules in D.C.

White House hosts farmers market 7
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago
"I've never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables!" declared First Lady Michelle Obama at Thursday's opening of the new White House Farmer's Market.
A foot in both camps

Quick thoughts on the USDA’s ‘Know Your Farmer’ program 14
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago
After getting more details about the USDA's new "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" program, I'm both encouraged and skeptical. It's a great start, but the government's farm programs are still overwhelmingly tilted in favor of Big Ag.
Hope, damn it!

In dark times, back to the garden 1
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago
While climate change rages ahead, the climate bill is flat on its back and the political system seems stuck in the mud of right-wing faux-populism. Tom Philpott finds hope in a different kind of dirt.
Imagining a new USDA

Top USDA official gets serious about local/regional food systems 8
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago
With the climate bill gutted by Big Ag and stalled in the Senate, with health-care reform on the verge of collapse, prospects for real change in national politics are looking grim. Well, here's some hope from what's traditionally one of the executive branch's most retrograde agencies: the USDA.
Crop protection racket

Agrichemical industry steps up pressure on White House organic garden 6
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Does the agrichemical industry's campaign to get Michelle Obama to use "crop protection" products on her organic garden strike anyone else as a bit Mafia-esque?
EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on The Daily Show 5
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Two funny Daily Show videos.
I know what I'll do next summer

Obama’s Clean Energy Service Corps will train people for green jobs—eventually 4
Posted 7 months ago
President Barack Obama has created a new Clean Energy Service Corps. That could be good news for young Americans wanting to get a foot in the door of the clean energy industry.
Food, class, and the new, new agrarianism

Using food as a tool of development, not extraction 1
Posted 8 months ago
When Michele Obama plunged a shovel into the White House lawn last Friday, she wasn't just preparing a productive vegetable-garden bed. She's was also tilling fertile ground for debate about new directions for the food system.