Grist | Topics | 24 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 24 of 24
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Monsanto finds a buyer for its rBGH business Pharma giant Lilly snaps up Posilac for 'at least' $300 million	Tom Philpott	20 Aug 2008	Gristmill
A week or so ago, commenting on news that Monsanto was looking to unload its much-despised bovine-growth-hormone business, I offered this nugget of wisdom: Whatever company buys it probably won't have Monsanto's deep pockets. Hmmm. What's that word again? Oh, yeah -- W-R-O-N-G. (Hat tip to Jill of La Vida Locavore.)Today, Monsanto announced that Eli Lilly, one of the biggest of the Big Pharma companies, had bought Posilac (brand name for rBGH) for $300 million. AP r ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Superweeds: ready for Roundup In Arkansas, a new GMO/herbicide solution to a problem created by an old one	Tom Philpott	14 Aug 2008	Gristmill
I've written a couple of times about the rise 'superweeds' in the Southeast and mid-South. In Arkansas, horseweed and Palmer amaranth now choke fields planted with Monsanto's Roundup Ready cotton and soy -- engineered to withstand heavy doses of Roundup, Monsanto's broad-spectrum herbicide. Fifteen years ago, horseweed and amaranth weren't problem weeds. Back in March, Arkansas Agricultural Extension Service officials were pushing farmers to supplement their Roundup a ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, toxics (all these topics)

Monsanto: still reading blogs PR firm Edleman launches charm offensive for the GMO giant	Tom Philpott	13 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Not so long ago, I was an utterly obscure farmer-blogger dashing off indictments of industrial agriculture for some 30 loyal readers (many of them house-mates and relatives). And then, evidently by the miracle of the Google search, a functionary from Monsanto's legal office discovered my blog and fired off a cease-and-desist letter. I published it, added a tart response, and alerted a few editors to the exchange. Within days, my site meter showed thousands of reade ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics)

All hail Monsanto! When the benevolent seed giant declares it's going to save the world, why be skeptical?	Guest author	06 Jun 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest post from Claire Hope Cummings, an environmental journalist covering food and farming stories for print, broadcast, and online media. She practiced law for for 20 years, including four years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has farmed in California and Vietnam and is the author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds (2008). ----- Do you worry about where your food comes from? Are you concerned that farmers might ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, health (all these topics)

Industrial ag-onistes The WSJ on fertilizer markets so manipulated, they might make a Saudi prince blush	Tom Philpott	30 May 2008	Gristmill
For all the misery it has caused, the global food-price crisis has at least forced people to think more seriously about food production. I can think of few things more taken for granted in modern post-industrial society than fertilizer. Few people know people know what fertilizes the fields that produce the food they eat -- fewer, I'd bet, than know the source of their drinking water or electricity. To modern consumers, all of these things appear as if by magic. But ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, industrial ag, shenanigans (all these topics)

Profit Actually Monsanto execs make millions off farmers' backs	Matthew Dillon	22 May 2008	Gristmill
Hugh Grant -- Monsanto chair, CEO, and president -- probably won't notice the increased price of a loaf of bread. And if he does, it will be with a smile. Grant is $13-million-and-change wealthier today than he was on Monday, as he choose to exercise stock options -- 116,000 shares worth -- that netted him a profit of over $114 per share. Like many of us, I wouldn't mind paying the extra dollar per loaf of bread if I knew the majority of that dollar was going back ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business (all these topics)

Who's cashing in on the high price of food? With food riots raging, let's open the books on the finances of Big Ag	Anna Lappe	18 Apr 2008	Gristmill
When we talk about the crisis in food prices, we should scrape below the surface to explore who's actually benefiting from the crisis. Unless you've had your head stuck in the freezer at Dean & Deluca, you've heard about the food crisis across the planet. A recent Financial Times displayed this staggering map of the globe: Black dots marked each of the countries were food riots have been sparked in outrage against the rising prices of food. Thirty dots in all. ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, biofuels, business, food, World Bank (all these topics)

ANWR of the heartland? Why plowing up Conservation Reserve Program land won't solve the food crisis	Tom Philpott	11 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Uh oh. The New York Times reports that 'thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government's biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate.' Rather then let the ground lie fallow, they're planting it with corn, soy, and wheat -- the price of each of which stands near or above all-time highs. 'Last fall, they took back as many acres as are in Rhode Island and Delaware combined,' The Times reports. And there's serious pressure to bring mo ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, cellulosic ethanol, economy, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Can industrial agriculture feed the world? Part 2 Global food riots edition	Tom Philpott	10 Apr 2008	Gristmill
A couple of months ago, I raised the question, can industrial agriculture feed the world?I was being intentionally provocative. For decades, policymakers have treated low-input, diversified agriculture -- 'organic' in the sense described by the great British agriculture scholar Sir Albert Howard -- as a kind of hippy indulgence. Sure, it's nice to grow food without poison, but you can't feed the world that way. To feed the globe's teeming masses, you need loads of mined ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Smithfield's European strategy The hog giant CAFOizes Poland and Romania to gain access to Western Europe	Tom Philpott	09 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Farmers in Iowa and North Carolina -- the two states that together house nearly half of U.S. hog production [PDF] -- won't be surprised by this report, from the International Herald Tribune: The American bacon producer, Smithfield Farms, now operates a dozen vast industrial pig farms in Poland. Importing cheap soy feed from South America, which the company feeds intensively to its tens of thousands of pigs, it has caused the price of pork to drop dramatically ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, European Union, food, industrial ag, Poland, Romania (all these topics)

Vanity is Green Digging into the relationships between business and environmentalism	Maywa Montenegro	07 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Admittedly, this is more of a link dump than a true blog post, but sometimes the green goodness is too good to pass up ... As Sarah and David have mentioned, the May edition of Vanity Fair is their third annual green issue. Featuring, ironically, the material girl on the cover, it's crammed with features that will enlighten, illuminate, and ... disturb.Pulitzer prize-winning journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele investigate Monsanto. ('We've never writt ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, celebrity, green living, music, shopping (all these topics)

Who owns your tomato? Another big horticultural seed company bought by Monsanto	Matthew Dillon	04 Apr 2008	Gristmill
When Monsanto buys into a market, they buy in big. In 2005, Monsanto's seed/genetic trait holdings were primarily in corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola. That year, they purchased Seminis, the world's largest vegetable seed company (see And We Have the Seed) specializing in seed for vegetable field crops. Now their takeover of the vegetable seed sector continues, as they have announced the intent to purchase the Dutch breeding and seed company, De Ruiter Seeds.This pur ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, Department of Justice, food, industrial ag, regulation (all these topics)

Got food? Farmworker Awareness Week is a chance to recognize the people whose labor means we can eat	Fawn Pattison	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
This is Farmworker Awareness Week, a time to support the millions of farmworkers whose labor puts food on every American table, and who work and live in some of the worst environmental conditions in our nation. It's estimated that 2 to 3 million farmworkers plant, tend, and harvest American crops every year. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are migrants who move from place to place following the harvest. Where I live, in North Carolina, migrant farmworkers are the ma ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, environmental justice, food, grassroots activism, health, toxics (all these topics)

Superweeds on the march In Arkansas, state ag officials turn to Syngenta to solve problems caused by Monsanto	Tom Philpott	14 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In the late 1990s, farmers in the Southeast began planting Roundup Ready cotton -- genetically engineered by Monsanto to withstand heavy doses of Roundup, the seed giant's own blockbuster herbicide. As a result, use of Roundup exploded -- and the farmers enjoyed 'clean' (i.e., weedless) fields of monocropped cotton. But after a point, something funny happened -- certain weeds began to survive the Roundup dousings. These 'superweeds' had somehow gained Roundup resist ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag, toxics (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Beef behemoth If deals go through, three firms will own 90 percent of the U.S. beef market	Tom Philpott	05 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. You'd be hard-pressed to find an industry more consolidated than beef-packing. Just four companies slaughter 83.5 percent of cows consumed in the United States. In standard antitrust theory, a market stops being competive when the four biggest players control 40 percent. The beef industry's extraordinary concentration gives the Big Four massive leverage to dictate how beef is ra ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Cutting Carbofuran EPA attempt to ban bird-killing pesticide runs into opposition		03 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 4:54 PM on 03 Mar 2008 The U.S. EPA has proposed a ban on a pesticide lethal to birds, but is running into resistance from the company that produces the chemical. The pesticide, carbofuran, is typically used on crops such as corn, alfalfa, and potatoes, and has been linked to the dieoff of 558 separate bird flocks since 1972. A manager with pesticide manufacturer FMC Corp. says carbofuran, "when use ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, Congress, industrial ag, news, politics, toxics, US EPA, wildlife (all these topics)

Biofuels: good for agrochemical/GMO biz GMO giant Monsanto wows Wall Street, consolidates its grip on South America	Tom Philpott	13 Feb 2008	Gristmill
While debate rages on Gristmill and elsewhere about whether biofuels are worth a damn ecologically, investors in agribusiness firms are quietly counting their cash.As corn and soy prices approach all-time highs, driven up by government biofuel mandates, farmers are scrambling to plant as much as they can -- and lashing the earth with chemicals to maximize yields. At a Wall Street meeting on Tuesday, genetically modified seed/herbicide giant Monsanto promised investors ...
Topics: agriculture, Argentina, Big Ag, biofuels, Brazil, business, energy, food, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics)

Dominant Traits Monsanto's latest court triumph cloaks massive market power	Tom Philpott	17 Jan 2008	Victual Reality
How does your garden grow? Photo: iStockphoto At first glance, it was an open-and-shut case. In 1998, Mississippi farmer Homan McFarling bought soybean seeds with genetic traits owned by Monsanto, then as now the world's dominant provider of genetically modified seeds -- and also the biggest herbicide maker. Like all farmers who buy GM seeds, McFarling signed a contract obliging him not to ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Feedlot meat production: nothing if not profitable Tyson Foods chief nets $10 million -- oops, no, $24 million	Tom Philpott	27 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Update [2007-12-28 10:14:4 by Tom Philpott]:According to AP, Tyson CEO Richard Bond made total compensation of $24 million in 2007, not $9.88 million, as reported by Bloomberg. Here's how industrial meat production works: you stuff animals into pens, feed them genetically modified, nutritionally suspect corn and soy (along with growth hormones), and force them to wallow in their own waste while keeping them alive with regular lashings of antibiotics.Then you haul the ...
Topics: industrial ag, business, Big Ag, agriculture, food (all these topics)

ADM's man at the USDA USDA secretary resigns; industrial-corn man takes charge	Tom Philpott	21 Sep 2007	Gristmill
Big doings at the USDA yesterday: Mike Johanns, the reliably pro-agribiz former governor of Nebraska, resigned from his post as USDA chair -- right in the middle of Farm Bill negotiations, now in the Senate. He says he's going to run for the Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating. Chuck Conner, currently the USDA's no. 2 man, will be the agency's acting secretary. Conner joined the Bush administration in 2001 as the president's "special assistant" on ag i ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, Department of Agriculture, industrial ag, politics (all these topics)

Unrigging the game How to stop the agribiz giants from impeding the growth of local food.	Tom Philpott	26 Apr 2007	Gristmill
In today's Victual Reality I discussed how a few companies dominate U.S. food production, and how their market girth weighs heavily on efforts to rebuild local-oriented, environmentally and socially responsible food networks. Now I'd like to add a few words on what might be done to remedy the situation. First of all, it's important to note that heavily consolidated food markets rig the game to favor large-scale, industrial-style farming. As companies like Cargill a ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag, local food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Bitter chocolate ADM gets its filthy paws on an immaculate confection	Tom Philpott	20 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Earlier today, Trina Stout brought to our attention a food crime in progress: the FDA is quietly preparing to let manufacturers adulterate chocolate by replacing cocoa butter with cheap vegetable oil. This will allow them to cut costs on candy bars and use cocoa butter for more valuable purposes -- thus undermining the quality of the chocolate most people eat and further brutalizing palates. I did some checking around, figuring I'd find Archer Daniels Midland's ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food (all these topics)

Tortilla Spat How Mexico's iconic flatbread went industrial and lost its flavor	Tom Philpott	13 Sep 2006	Victual Reality
In a spectacle similar to the one conjured up by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, a Mexican judiciary panel handed the nation's presidency to Felipe Calder�n last week. Even The New York Times, in its circumspect way, acknowledged that the new president-elect's narrow victory over leftist rival Andr�s Manuel L�pez Obrador involved seemingly illegal activity by Calder�n's governmental and bi ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, local food, Mexico, politics, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Archer Daniels Midland: The Exxon of corn? ADM is doing for soil what Exxon has done to air.	Tom Philpott	02 Feb 2006	Gristmill
Amid all the hoopla over President Bush's State of the Union address, Archer Daniels Midland's quarterly report (PDF), released Tuesday, got little attention outside of Wall Street -- where it drew cheers, sending ADM's share price to an all-time high. At the company's conference call with analysts, the Wall Street Journal reports, John M. McMillin of Prudential Securities 'likened [Archer Daniels Midland] to Exxon Mobil Corp., which just announced its own record-brea ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

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