Grist | Topics | 20 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 20 of 20
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Dispatches From the Fields: My ride in a combine How commodity grain farmers have sown the seeds of their demise	Ariane Lotti	03 Oct 2008	Gristmill
In 'Dispatches From the Fields,' Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape. ----- A field of dried soybeans ready to be combined. Although 'that time of year' in corn and soybean country is a few weeks late, it has finally arrived. Whether starting up their new $300,000 capital investment for the first ti ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, economy, food, industrial ag, Iowa (all these topics)

An economist's eye view Outline for a move to a sustainable agriculture system	Jason D Scorse	29 Jul 2008	Gristmill
The agricultural industry is one of the biggest users of water, energy, and chemicals on the planet. Overall it poses one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity, which is why it deserves significant attention from the environmental community. But when it comes to defining what is meant by 'sustainable agriculture,' there is a lot of confusion. Many people think 'organic,' or 'local,' or 'non-GMO,' or even 'biodynamic.' It will come as little surprise that e ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, Big Ag, economy, food, World Trade Organization (all these topics)

Perry and Thrust U.S. should back off from biofuels to bring down food prices, says Texas guv		28 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 4:56 PM on 28 Apr 2008 Has the U.S. push for biofuels contributed to rising global food prices? Well, yes, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday: "There has been apparently some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort." But, she hastened to add, "biofuels continue to be an extremely important piece of the alternative energy picture" and & ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, economy, energy, food, news, politics, state politics, Texas (all these topics)

Sticker shock! What's causing the sudden run-up in food prices?	Tom Philpott	25 Apr 2008	Gristmill
A lot of people are wondering what the hell is going on with food prices. Rice, dollars per ton Source: Reuters The price of bulk rice on global markets has tripled since the start of the year, school children in some of the world's poorest nations are losing access to school-lunch programs, and people in places like Haiti are literally scrounging through garbage dumps in search of something to eat. Here in the U.S., heightened prices are putting a ha ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, economy, energy, food (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)

The corn identity How Congress is shortchanging our health and sweetening things for the food industry	Bill Chameides	24 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Are we becoming children of the corn, thanks in part to large subsidies and overproduction? Photo: NREL/Warren Gretz At dinner Sunday night, I asked my friend Prasad if he knew about the new farm bill and what it means for average Americans. He didn't. I wasn't surprised. With the election, the war, and rising prices to fret about, not many people are pondering legislation about farms. But they should, because it has huge implications for the country's n ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food, health, legislation (all these topics)

Who is a farmer? Linguistic insights into agriculture	Sharon Astyk	23 Apr 2008	Gristmill
One of the problems people have discussing sustainable agriculture is the question of language. I was trained originally in English literature and hold as an article of faith that language matters -- deeply. That is, I believe that we can only come to an honest vision for the future with a shared language that accurately describes our world. Agriculture is in the news, obviously -- and the future of farming is a big question. But we keep running up against the ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food, gardening, green space, placemaking (all these topics)

Election '08: Real alternatives for real food? Questions for Obama and Clinton from a Wisconsin farmer	Guest author	19 Feb 2008	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay by Jim Goodman, a farmer in Wonewoc, Wisc., and a Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Policy Fellow. It first appeared in the Capitol Times (Madison, Wisc.). ----- The candidates have come and gone through Wisconsin for the primary season, but I still have some questions for the Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. I would like to be enthusiastic about this election, I really would. After the past ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, Barack Obama, biofuels, elections, food, health, Hillary Clinton, local food, politics, presidential race 08, Wisconsin (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: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, economy, ethanol, food, 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: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food, Malawi, politics (all these topics)

'OECD warns against biofuels subsidies' Biofuels subsidies will only lead to increased food costs and habitat destruction	Jason D Scorse	11 Sep 2007	Gristmill
This, courtesy of the Financial Times, is a welcome development. Hopefully, the Doha Round of the GATT will get restarted, and this can be addressed in addition to the more general discussion of agricultural subsidies.
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, energy, food, habitat loss (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)

Myth: Subsidies keep food prices low A guest essay from ED's Scott Faber	David Roberts	12 Jul 2007	Gristmill
The following is a guest post from Scott Faber, Farm Bill campaign director for Environmental Defense. (Scott also has a blog.) --- Congress is in serious negotiations over the next version of the Farm Bill. The debate is fertile ground for food policy myths and misconceptions. Perhaps the best (or worst) example is that old chestnut that farm subsidies keep food prices low. Here's why that's just a myth. Most of the corn and soybeans grown in America en ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, biofuels, food, legislation, politics (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)

Risky Business Thoughts from a small farm during the midwinter lull	Tom Philpott	10 Jan 2007	Victual Reality
Before I became a farmer three growing seasons ago, I lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and reveled in the array of top-flight local produce available from mid-spring to late fall. Long about January, though, a kind of local-food withdrawal would set in. Frosty, with a chance of failure. Photo: iStockphoto By this time of year, the legendary produce aisle of the Park Slope Food Co-op would be given over mainly ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, farmers markets, food, local food, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Cold Comfort Farm Could small farms provide fresh food year-round, even in northern climes?	Tom Philpott	30 Aug 2006	Victual Reality
Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It's a common charge -- and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture's greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement's supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M -- that factory for fu ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, local food, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Reform ag subsidies, but don't plow them under Why the late, lamented Doha round wasn't really the answer for ag policy.	Tom Philpott	07 Aug 2006	Gristmill
Harvesting a bit of vintage Reagan-era rhetoric, L.A. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg recently denounced what he called 'welfare queens on tractors.' The right-winger's target was clear: The U.S. farm subsidy program, which doles out around $14.5 billion per year (depending on market fluctuations), mainly to large producers of corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans, and rice. As Congress opens debate on the 2007 Farm Bill -- the omnibus five-year legislation that governs agricu ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food (all these topics)

Attack of the killer corn Why the heavily subsidized corn harvest amounts to an annual environmental calamity	Tom Philpott	22 Feb 2006	Gristmill
While researching my Poverty & the Environment piece on the food system, I had occasion to look closely at the corn harvest, source of so much of our cheap food. As bad as the annual flood of cheap corn is for our health -- nutritionally worthless high-fructose corn syrup, cheap feed for confined animals pumped full of antibiotics and hormones -- it may be even worse for the environment.Bolstered by government subsidies that have averaged about $4 billion annually ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, food (all these topics)

Mad cash cow: Will the U.S. slaughter agriculture subsidies? Why the Bush Administration looks set to jettison the farm-subsidy program, beloved of industry and	Tom Philpott	11 Oct 2005	Gristmill
Long the bane of environmentalists and sustainable-agriculture proponents, the U.S. agriculture-subsidy system has drawn some unlikely new critics: top Bush administration officials. Speaking before a food-industry trade group last week, USDA chief Mike Johanns, the reliably pro-Big Ag former governer of subsidy-rich Nebraska, complained that in fiscal year 2005: 92 percent of commodity program spending was paid on five crops -- corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, food, politics (all these topics)

Stories About: ag subsidies AND agriculture AND food