Grist | Topics | 18 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 18 of 18
Headline	Author	Published	Section
ReGeneration Roadtrip: Digging the food justice movement A visit to Alemany Farm in San Francisco	Sarah van Schagen	25 Sep 2008	Gristmill
I drove right past Alemany Farm three times before I finally found it. That's because I wasn't looking up. The mostly volunteer venture that grows organic food (and green jobs) for low-income communities is located on a hillside, the rows and rows of green leafy goodness like rungs on a ladder leading skyward. Once I hiked the hill, though, I found a hard-working group of volunteers with hands in the dirt and smiles on their faces. And they were more th ...
Topics: sustainable ag, local food, agriculture, food, ReGeneration Roadtrip, California, video (all these topics)

Rough to the Gills Judge says Calif. salmon in trouble but offers no short-term solution		21 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 11:04 AM on 21 Jul 2008 The dams and aqueducts that shuttle water from California's Sacramento River Delta to the rest of the state will "appreciably increase jeopardy" to salmon and steelhead in the coming months, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said Friday. But while Wanger agreed with environmentalists that "the three salmonid species are not viable and are all in jeopardy of ex ...
Topics: agriculture, California, litigation, National Marine Fisheries Service, news, water conflicts (all these topics)

Check Mate, CheckMate California officials yank controversial urban spraying plan		22 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 12:07 PM on 22 Jun 2008 California officials have announced that they will not spray the urban Bay Area with a pheromone this summer, delighting activists who had campaigned strenuously against the plan. The pheromone with the ominous name CheckMate LBAM-F keeps the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth from reproducing, but also has been linked to complaints of respiratory trouble in humans. Spraying had ...
Topics: agriculture, California, health, news, San Francisco, toxics (all these topics)

Putting Down Roots Ousted L.A. gardeners continue to farm		28 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 3:17 PM on 28 Apr 2008 In June 2006, a land dispute led to the shutdown of the South Central Community Garden in Los Angeles. Weeks of protest and tree-sitting by celebrities and regular folk proved unfruitful, and the 14-acre garden, tended by 350 low-income families in the middle of one of L.A.'s poorest neighborhoods, was bulldozed. Nearly two years later, with legal wrangling over the land's ownership ongoing, the gardeners ...
Topics: agriculture, California, food, gardening, Los Angeles, news, placemaking, sustainable ag (all these topics)

The Moth-Ban Prophecies Bay Area escapes aerial spraying, for now		25 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 10:48 AM on 25 Apr 2008 A plan to spray Santa Cruz County with synthetic pheromones must be postponed until an environmental review is completed, a county judge ruled Thursday. The spraying, an attempt by agriculture officials to curb the invasion of the crop-gobbling light brown apple moth, was to begin in Santa Cruz County in June and expand to seven other Bay Area counties in August. But many of the 7 million resident ...
Topics: agriculture, California, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

It's Like the Fog, but More Toxic Aerial spraying of pesticide on Bay Area given OK		15 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 4:03 PM on 15 Feb 2008 The California agriculture department has authorized nighttime aerial pesticide spraying on the San Francisco Bay Area this summer in an attempt to eradicate a potentially crop-destroying moth. Similar spraying was done in two other counties this fall, after which more than 600 residents complained of respiratory problems. Application of the pesticide, called Checkmate, was only ...
Topics: agriculture, California, news, San Francisco, toxics (all these topics)

The downside of high times Drug cultivation in Northern California is a bad trip	Erik Hoffner	04 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Terrain magazine shows how the cozy-sounding northern California agriculture scene is drying up watersheds and poisoning the landscape, all to bring people their drug of choice. Installment one on the boom in illegal water rustling for wineries starts like this: After one of the rainiest years on record -- when parts of the valley had been flooded -- Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Navarro River, was dry. 'It was as if we were in a drought year,' says Hall, ...
Topics: agriculture, California (all these topics)

Crop Phooey Pesticide use on crops drops in California, but fumigant use up		30 Nov 2007	News
Posted at 1:23 PM on 30 Nov 2007 Agricultural pesticide use dropped by 10 million pounds in California last year -- a bit of progress offset by an increased use of fumigants by strawberry growers. In addition, application of commercial pesticides for uses such as landscaping and mosquito control increased. California "works hard to promote least-toxic pest management" says Mary-Ann Warmerdam of the state Depar ...
Topics: agriculture, California, news, toxics (all these topics)

Taking 'Cides Fight over disclosure of pesticide ingredients heats up in California		19 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 6:57 AM on 19 Oct 2007 In California, a battle is raging over a pesticide that critics say is sickening hundreds of residents as it's being sprayed over large swaths of Monterey County to battle a crop-destroying moth. Residents who became ill after the first application of the pesticide want to know what's in it that could cause asthma-like symptoms, rashes, stomach pains, and burning eyes. But regula ...
Topics: agriculture, California, litigation, news, toxics (all these topics)

Berry Bad News EPA approves carcinogenic pesticide		08 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 1:45 PM on 08 Oct 2007 Just when we think the U.S. EPA might have some sense, it goes and approves a carcinogenic pesticide, ignoring scientists' warnings that "pregnant women and the fetus, children, the elderly, farmworkers, and other people living near application sites would be at serious risk." As a substitute for ozone-depleting fumigant methyl bromide, California and Florida strawberry growers and other farmers will w ...
Topics: agriculture, California, Florida, health, news, toxics, US EPA (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: food, health, California, agriculture, ag policy, industrial ag (all these topics)

Cali water madness Interior Dept. plans huge water giveaway to Big Agribiz	David Roberts	29 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Brad Plumer points to this, which tells the story of how the Interior Department is planning to give away gargantuan amounts of water to Big Agribiz in California. If you'd like to dig into the background details, check out some posts we ran by Lloyd G. Carter, president of California's Save Our Streams council -- here, here, and here. It's mind-boggling.
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, California, Department of Interior, politics (all these topics)

The 'Terminator' eyes Cali farmland Schwarzenegger to California farmers: Considuh this a divorce	Tom Philpott	27 May 2007	Gristmill
There's a fair amount of debate on Gristmill about how much green cred to give the Governator -- that A-list action hero of enlightened Republicanism. I don't follow California politics closely enough to venture an opinion. But I do know that promoting a policy that will result in yet more suburban sprawl and evict small- and mid-sized farmers from their land -- all in an effort to save chump change from the state budget -- hardly does Schwarzenegger credit. Over on ...
Topics: agriculture, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, placemaking, sprawl (all these topics)

Spinach Cycle Latest E. coli outbreak should prompt rethink of industrial agriculture	Tom Philpott	21 Sep 2006	Victual Reality
For the ninth time since 1995, California's Salinas Valley -- the "nation's salad bowl" -- has been implicated in an E. coli scare involving salad greens. Avoid E. coli, buy L. coli. Photo: iStockphoto As I write this, no definitive explanation has emerged for the latest outbreak, this one involving pre-washed, bagged spinach. But while the feds haven't yet figured out how ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, California, food, Food and Drug Administration, industrial ag, organic food, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Up Against the Wal-Mart Big buyers make organic farmers feel smaller than ever	Tom Philpott	23 Aug 2006	Victual Reality
With Whole Foods continuing to dazzle Wall Street with its growth and Wal-Mart vowing to become the world's No. 1 organic grocer, now would seem to be a wonderful time to be an organic farmer -- particularly one with enough acreage to supply the corporate giants. According to classical economics, when demand jumps, supply should follow, pulled up by the good's rising price. But a funny ...
Topics: agriculture, business, California, food, organic food, Victual Reality, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

SOL: Sustaining Ourselves Locally	Chris Schults	16 Apr 2006	Gristmill
According to the Current TV Studio blog, SOL, a viewer-contributed piece about a sustainable development project in Oakland, will be airing on TV. I think this is a good example of how people like you, armed with a camera and a passion, can produce a short film that could potentially reach 28 million homes (according to a company press release [PDF]). Here's the synopsis on Current: This is specifically a piece on an urban sustainable development project in Oa ...
Topics: agriculture, California, food, placemaking (all these topics)

Organically groan: working conditions on California's organic farms Organic farms don't treat workers any better than other farms	Tom Philpott	18 Oct 2005	Gristmill
As Grist's own Amanda Griscom Little recently reported, a trade group representing Kraft and Dean Foods has been quietly pushing Congress to tweak organic labelling standards to make them more friendly to food-processing giants. Thankfully, the Organic Consumers Association has led a fight, so far successful, to stymie those changes. While it's important to preserve the organic label's integrity on the supermarket shelf, it's just as important to interrogate what it ...
Topics: agriculture, California, food, organic food (all these topics)

Sleep With the Fishes		03 Oct 2002	Daily Grist
Sleep With the Fishes At least 20,000 chinook salmon and other fish have died in Northern California's Klamath River in the last two weeks, but federal officials are unwilling to attribute the deaths to the Bush administration's decision to divert water away from the river this year and into an irrigation project in southern Oregon. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Wil ...
Topics: agriculture, California, marine life, Oregon, politics, water conflicts (all these topics)

Stories About: agriculture AND California