Grist | Topics | 9 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 9 of 9
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Siding with the Bushies? Why a Bush veto of the farm bill is bad for the food movement (and the world)	Elanor Starmer	12 May 2008	Gristmill
My former boss in D.C. once said that if she ever found herself on the same side of an issue as the Bush administration, it was time to go back and look more closely: There must be a hidden agenda. That was the thought that struck me as I contemplated the administration's farm bill veto threat on Friday. I understand the calls from some in the sustainable-ag community to veto the farm bill (and thank Tom Philpott and the comment crew for outlining them). The argume ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Thinking outside the cereal box Thoughts on the farm bill and the skyrocketing cost of food	Guest author	24 Apr 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest post by Alan Hunt, senior policy analyst for food and farm policy at the Northeast-Midwest Institute and coordinator of the Farm and Food Policy Project. ----- The rising cost of food worldwide is more complex than portrayed in recent articles in The New York Times and the Washington Post. Like a magician revealing his secrets, the once-invisible farm and food system is drawing scrutiny from the media, policymakers, and the public as we realize h ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Putting your money where your mouth is How expensive is food, really?	Sharon Astyk	14 Apr 2008	Gristmill
There is no doubt whatsoever that rising food costs are hurting people all over the world. More than half of the world's population spends 50 percent of their income or more on food, and the massive rise in staple prices threatens to increase famine rates drastically. We are already seeing the early signs of this in Haiti and in other poor nations. It is also undoubtedly true that rising food prices are digging into the budgets of average people, including me. An ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, economy, food, legislation, politics, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Crunch time for the farm bill The legislation isn't perfect, but it's far better than extending the 2002 bill	Aimee Witteman	14 Apr 2008	Gristmill
With the new farm bill languishing in the last stages of negotiations, many are bemoaning its lack of sweeping reform, suggesting that we have gained very little from months and years of work. But if the new bill is not to be the visionary document that many hoped and advocated for, what, if anything, do we stand to lose if the new bill is vetoed or negotiations reach an impasse and the 2002 farm bill is extended for two years? There are several small but import ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, legislation, local food, organic food, politics, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Farm bill agonistes After all the fuss, looks like we might get an extension of the 2002 farm bill	Tom Philpott	27 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Photo: iStockphoto Remember the farm bill -- the omnibus federal legislation that generated so much sound and fury last year? Like a downer cow slouching toward its executioner, the farm bill still lives, sort of. The House, Senate, and president are haggling over it, squabbling over the bill's price tag and how it will be funded. If they don't hash something out by March 15, they may just extend the 2002 farm bill. Here's what Tom Harkin, chair of th ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Countdown to the 2008 Farm Bill: Part III Organic production and research	Aimee Witteman	15 Jan 2008	Gristmill
This is the third in a series of five farm bill fact sheets from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. For more information on the status of all sustainable agriculture provisions in the Senate and House versions of the farm bill, please visit SAC's farm bill legislative tracking center. Despite the fact that organic agriculture is one of the fastest growing sectors of American agriculture, the U.S. is currently experiencing a domestic shortfall of organically pro ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, legislation, organic food, politics (all these topics)

Time for some rehab Agriculture is drunk on corn-based ethanol	Thomas Dobbs	14 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Thomas Dobbs is Professor Emeritus of Economics at South Dakota State University, and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Policy Fellow. ----- American agriculture is becoming addicted to corn-based ethanol, and the economic and environmental effects of this addiction call for some intervention! The explosive growth in U.S. ethanol production from corn is having worldwide ramifications. December 6 articles in The Economist ('Cheap no more' ...
Topics: legislation, ag subsidies, ag policy, politics, food, economy, ethanol, biofuels, agriculture (all these topics)

On corn, meat, and the myth of Big Farma Why we shouldn't target farmers for our farm bill frustrations	Guest author	13 Dec 2007	Gristmill
We're very pleased to run this guest essay by Elanor Starmer, an independent activist scholar who lives in California. Elanor recently published an important paper (PDF) on the livestock industry with Tim Wise of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. As the farm bill lurches to its conclusion amid shrill rhetoric about the 'farm bloc,' Elanor redirects our attention to the real beneficiaries of both federal farm policy and conventional at ...
Topics: politics, legislation, industrial ag, ag policy, agriculture, food (all these topics)

Ag policy as if people mattered Time to kick it old school on the farm bill.	Tom Philpott	24 Jun 2007	Gristmill
The terms of debate around the 2007 farm bill's controversial commodity title have gotten rather narrow.On the one hand, you've got the House subcommittee on ag commodities, which essentially cut and pasted commodity language from the subsidy-heavy 2002 farm bill into the 2007 version now being drafted.On the other hand, you've got a chorus of critics, ranging from Oxfam to the Cato Institute to the Environmental Working Group, demanding an end to ag subsidies. This gro ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, Big Ag, food, legislation, politics (all these topics)

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