Grist | Topics | 105 Results

RESULTS		Results 51 – 75 of 105
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Senate farm bill post-mortem The Sustainable Ag Coalition delivers its assessment	Tom Philpott	17 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has been involved in farm bills since the mid-1970s, working behind the scenes to try to snatch farm legislation from the paws of agribusiness. So when he delivers his assessment on how things went, he does so from the perspective of long memory. His insights are particularly important now, as sustainable-ag and food-justice advocates figure out what's in the Senate version that's worth fighting for. And there ...
Topics: industrial ag, sustainable ag, agriculture, legislation, ag policy, 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)

Farm bill update Payment limits topple, but the livestock title looks good -- for now	Tom Philpott	14 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Update [2007-12-14 13:5:54 by Tom Philpott]:The Senate just passed the farm bill, 79-14. Presumably the livestock title is intact. Now it's time to mount an epochal battle to defend that important title as Congress reconciles the House and Senate versions, which will take place in early 2008. The Senate is set to vote on the farm bill this afternoon. I'll be trying to pull a Brian Beutler and follow the debate via CSpan. An amendment that would have limited subsi ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Beyond the farm bill Progressive urban food bills could help reshape America's food future	Guest author	14 Dec 2007	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay by Christopher D. Cook, author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. His work has appeared in The Nation, Harper's, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor and Mother Jones. ----- After many legislative hiccups along the way, Congress is rapidly deciding the fate of America's food supply: what's grown, how it's produced and by whom, and how that food will affect our health and the planet. The roughl ...
Topics: food, ag policy, politics, agriculture, sustainable ag (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)

Corn ethanol to the max Bush to ethanol industry: don't worry, you're gonna get your fat mandate	Tom Philpott	12 Dec 2007	Gristmill
The stock market is a glorified casino, and I'm no betting man. Plus I'm broke. But if I were flush and even a bit of a gambler, I'd be buying up shares in ethanol companies and corporations that sell inputs to corn farmers. Why? Because every U.S. politician who matters seems determined to engineer conditions that will make corn-based ethanol production triple over the next several years, reaching what most people consider its maximum of 15 billion gallons. The H ...
Topics: ag policy, US EPA, ethanol, biofuels, agriculture, politics (all these topics)

Farm bill: Stick it to Big Meat Back under debate in the Senate, the farm bill lurches ahead	Tom Philpott	07 Dec 2007	Gristmill
The farm bill has been languishing in the Senate for weeks, buried under the weight of hundreds of specious, unrelated amendments. But the chamber reached a deal Thursday; each party agreed to float only 20 amendments. That means the bill is back on track. Majority leader Harry Reid vowed the Senate would hammer out a version by holiday break, meaning it would go to reconciliation and then to the president's desk early in the new year. So now it's crunch time. Th ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, legislation, politics (all these topics)

A bumper crop of corn Malawi celebrates, but for how long?	Maywa Montenegro	03 Dec 2007	Gristmill
So while the U.S. Farm Bill is out to pasture until 2008, it looks like most commodity subsidies will remain untouched. Agricultural price supports may be the law of the land here, but it's certainly not what we've been advocating abroad. A bittersweet story on page one of today's NY Times documents how Malawians are pulling back from the brink, largely because -- going against the wishes of the World Bank -- they've begun to reinstitute government crop subsidies: ...
Topics: agriculture, ag policy, ag subsidies, Malawi, politics, food (all these topics)

Will conservatives eliminate farm subsidies? A clip from the Republican YouTube debate	David Roberts	29 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you small-government conservatism:
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, elections, politics, presidential race 08 (all these topics)

Will the energy bill bail out ethanol? The corn industry hopes Congress will pull its fat out of the fire	Tom Philpott	28 Nov 2007	Gristmill
I used to love to start my writing day by taking a poke or two at the corn-based ethanol industry -- you know, the biggest greenwash ever. Photo: mrobenalt These days, the debunking of corn fuel almost seems like it's piling on. Today, two major newspapers -- the LA Times and The Wall Street Journal -- ran front-page stories that essentially say: everyone hates government support for corn-based ethanol, except for people with a direct financial (or polit ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, politics (all these topics)

How egregious are farm subsidies?	Jason D Scorse	25 Nov 2007	Gristmill
So egregious that they make the Bush administration look reasonable. I repeat my contention that completely eliminating this boondoggle that trashes the environment, increases incentives for obesity, and distorts the entire global agricultural trade should be a high priority for environmentalists. Step #1: call it what it is -- corporate welfare.
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, politics (all these topics)

Revamping the current ag subsidy system Revenue insurance is a promising option for farm aid	Grist	20 Nov 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest post from Britt Lundgren, an Agricultural Policy Fellow at Environmental Defense. It is part of a recent conversation on agricultural policy. ----- Fixing farm policy, which has been the single largest influence on the shape of agriculture in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl, is not easy. 'Not easy' will seem a drastic understatement to anyone who has followed the endless debate on the Senate floor over the past two weeks, which has produced much hand ...
Topics: ag subsidies, ag policy, politics, agriculture (all these topics)

It's economics, not agronomy Why gutting commodity subsidies should be the focus of Farm Bill reform efforts	Thomas Dobbs	19 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Thomas Dobbs is Professor Emeritus of Economics at South Dakota State University, and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Policy Fellow. ----- Tom Philpott wrote an article in which he challenged some of the key assumptions underlying Farm Bill reform efforts of the past year ('It's the Agronomy, Stupid'). He contended that gutting commodity subsidies would not solve the U.S.'s long-standing oversupply problems, and that we need the money currently in t ...
Topics: ag policy, politics, ag subsidies, agriculture, legislation (all these topics)

Subsidies and the agony of modern farm policy A response to my critics	Tom Philpott	14 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Last week's Victual Reality column startled a lot of sustainable-food advocates, particularly folks not immersed in the details of U.S. farm policy. Subsidies, I argued, do not cause the ravages of industrial agriculture; rather, subsidies are a symptom of a food policy gone wrong. Moreover, I continued, gutting subsidies won't end the ubiquity of cheap and empty calories in the U.S. diet; or stop the devastation of waterways from fertilizer runoff; or make CAFOs ...
Topics: agriculture, ag policy, politics, ag subsidies (all these topics)

Farming and climate change More evidence that industrial ag is destroying the planet	Tom Philpott	04 Nov 2007	Gristmill
From an ecological standpoint, the fundamental problem with U.S. farm policy dating back to the '70s is that it rewards farmers for maximizing yield at all cost. Encouraged to produce as much as possible, all the time, farmers have few incentives to conserve resources or protect water, air, or soil quality. The federal government's dizzying array of biofuel subsidies -- which have propped up crop prices and encouraged yet more production -- only exacerbates the situ ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, climate, industrial ag (all these topics)

Angry greens giants Inspired by the spinach scare, new California rules could wilt small farmers	Tom Philpott	04 Oct 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest essay by Judith Redmond, co-owner of Northern California's legendary Full Belly Farm and president of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. California is on the verge of adopting a policy that would regulate all of the state's salad greens-producing farms -- including ones that sell to a local market -- as if they were huge operations that ship cross-country. That's as predictable as it is absurd -- another case of the problems caused by industri ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, California, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Business as usual? Why we shouldn't forget the Farm Bill	Aimee Witteman	02 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Once again, a prime example of our misguided farm policies hits like a ton of factory-farm manure sludge -- or in this case, a massive sack of federally insured, genetically modified corn. Last Wednesday, Monsanto announced that the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) approved a pilot program that will give farmers a 20 percent discount on insurance premiums if they plant a majority of their corn acres with seeds featuring Monsanto's trademarked YieldG ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, business, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Guest movie review: King Corn Children of the corn armed with movie cameras	Tom Philpott	13 Sep 2007	Gristmill
This is a guest post by Nicole de Beaufort, a long-time advocate for local, sustainable, and accessible food systems. She is principal of Fourth Sector Consulting in North Oaks, Minn., which employs strategic communications to work with food system advocates and funders to mobilize the growing food movement. The film King Corn is set to open in theaters nationwide starting Oct. 12 in New York. ----- In 1977, Stephen King published a short story in Penthouse about some ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, Iowa, movies (all these topics)

Subsidizing healthier freedom fries Yet another distortion to correct a distortion	Ron Steenblik	06 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Anybody who closely follows U.S. agricultural policy appreciates the journalism of Philip Brasher and his team at the Des Moines Register. One of Mr. Brasher's recent articles highlights a feature of the farm bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that probably few people have heard of: the 'Healthy Oils Incentive Program.' According to the website of freshman Congressman Nick Lampson (D-Stafford, Texas) -- who recently underwent quadruple heart bypass ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, food, politics (all these topics)

Forget the Farm Bill For now, local politics is the way to effect ag-policy change	Tom Philpott	02 Aug 2007	Victual Reality
Over the past few years, grassroots support has swelled for new federal farm policies -- ones that promote healthy, sustainably grown food, not the interests of a few agribusiness firms. Udder madness. Photo: iStockphoto The target of much of this organizing has been the 2007 farm bill. If past farm bill debates have been the concern of a small cadre of lobbyists and activists, this one ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Congress, farmers markets, food, industrial ag, Iowa, local food, organic food, politics, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

At Last, Some Consensus House votes today on universally despised farm bill		27 Jul 2007	Daily Grist
At Last, Some Consensus House votes today on universally despised farm bill Today finds the House scrambling to pass its controversial version of the 2007 farm bill. And by controversial, we mean everyone hates it -- Democrats, Republicans, and the White House. The $286 billion package, which contains about $42 billion in subsidies, ends subsidies to farmers with an income of over $1 millio ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, Congress, news, politics (all these topics)

Swine By Us Court rules against green groups, lets factory farms off the hook		19 Jul 2007	Daily Grist
Swine By Us Court rules against green groups, lets factory farms off the hook Some 2,600 livestock companies are participating in a sweet deal from the U.S. EPA. In exchange for paying a minimal fee and agreeing to participate in an air-quality data-collection program, factory farms can basically be exempt from Clean Air Act requirements for 30 months. When the swap was announced ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Big Ag, industrial ag, litigation, news, US EPA (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)

Thirty years to hone an argument Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished	biodiversivist	19 Jun 2007	Gristmill
This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's 'case for corn-based fuel.' I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field. How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered? That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that 'an evil to be conquered' isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, b ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Nothing busted but our chops How the 2007 Farm Bill can help restore market competition	Aimee Witteman	13 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Are federal authorities finally taking the idea that a few companies shouldn't be allowed to dominate the food system seriously? Well, the Federal Trade Commission recently blocked Whole Foods from gobbling up rival natural foods marketer Wild Oats. Congratulations to the FTC for busting up the natural-foods trust! But even combined, Whole Foods and Wild Oats would account for only 15 percent of natural-foods sales. Meanwhile, Smithfield Foods alone now controls ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Congress, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, food, politics (all these topics)

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