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Headline	Author	Published	Section
A new vision of 'credit crunch' While global markets crater, a Vermont town unites around food	Tom Philpott	09 Oct 2008	Gristmill
The effort to revive global credit markets has devolved into farce. Every day, U.S. authorities announce some earth-shaking new measure -- a $700 billion bailout, the Fed's extraordinary move into the commercial-paper business, a coordinated global set of rate cuts -- and every day, investors continue acting as tweaky as meth heads when the dope has run out. Why should this matter to anyone who doesn't have a pile invested in the stock market? Because we're in what's ...
Topics: agriculture, economy, food, local food, Vermont, Wall Street (all these topics)

Dispatches From the Fields: Your tax dollars at work Big ag, little ag, and government support	Stephanie Paige Ogburn	09 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. ----- Nicolas Enjalbert, a graduate student at Colorado State University, shows off a trial of an oilseed crop, camelina, that could potentially be used for biodiesel feed stock. Stephanie Paige Ogburn In t ...
Topics: agriculture, local food, organic food, regulation, scientific research, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Sustaining what, and for whom? Christine MacDonald on Big Green NGOs and soy expansion in Brazil	Tom Philpott	06 Oct 2008	Gristmill
Cargill and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have a long-standing relationship dating back to the 1980s. Cargill and TNC share a mutual interest in developing science-based, improved agricultural management practices that guarantee the productivity and enduring health of the ecosystem and landscape. -- From a joint Cargill/TNC document [PDF] dated February 2006 --- In her new book Green Inc., Christine MacDonald argues that that large environmental NGOs have compromis ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, books, Brazil, business, environmental movement (all these topics)

Ethanol waste: Good for Rover? The pet-food industry takes a serious look at distillers grains	Tom Philpott	06 Oct 2008	Gristmill
Should the mush left over after the ethanol process -- known as distillers grains -- be fed to farm animals? There's been little real debate around that question, even though a) heavy use of distillers grains as cow feed has been linked to deadly E. Coli 0157H7 outbreaks; and b), the mush has been shown to contain all manner of residues from the ethanol process, including industrial chemicals and antibiotics. While questions surrounding distillers grains as animal f ...
Topics: agriculture, animal welfare, ethanol, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Tour de pig If you can't stand the smell, tough luck	Steph Larsen	03 Oct 2008	Gristmill
Duplin County, N.C. stinks. And no wonder. Its human population is just under 50,000 people, but it is also home to 2.2 million [PDF] of North Carolina's 10 million hogs [PDF]. Last week, I went on a bus tour of Duplin County as a part of the Politics of Food Conference to see how confined animal feeding operations impact rural communities. It was not pretty. Our guides on this tour were Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an assistant research professor at the University of South Car ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, animal welfare, health, industrial ag, livestock, North Carolina (all these topics)

Politics and the Dinner Table Weighing Obama's and McCain's stances on food and farm policy	Tom Philpott	03 Oct 2008	Victual Reality
Will the next president be tough enough to defy the wishes of agribusiness? Apologies to Grant Wood Last month at Slow Food Nation, Michael Pollan made an interesting point about food policy and presidential politics. Food issues won't likely play much of a role during the campaign's stretch run, Pollan said, but the winning candidate will almost certainly be forced to confront ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Barack Obama, food, John McCain, politics, presidential race 08, Victual Reality (all these topics)

ReGeneration Roadtrip: Buffers and biomass Streamlining the agricultural process in Iowa	Sarah van Schagen	03 Oct 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest post by my travel partner, Todd Dwyer, head blogger for Dell's ReGeneration.org, where this post originally appeared. ----- I have a shocking piece of news for you. You may want to sit down for this: Agriculture is big business in Iowa. Did I say 'big?' Maybe that's an understatement. Of the state's 35 million acres, 31 million are used for agricultural purposes, and Iowa stands amongst the world's most altered land in the world. ...
Topics: agriculture, business, ethanol, Iowa, ReGeneration Roadtrip, scientific research, video (all these topics)

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)

Trick or treat? As Halloween nears, beware of the 'fat-free' candy corn	Meredith Niles	02 Oct 2008	Gristmill
It's the beginning of October and as the cooler temperatures and colorful leaves start to make an appearance, every retailer in America is switching storefronts to include pumpkins and of course, Halloween candy. The orange and black packages are cropping up in drugstores and supermarkets nationwide, and the glycemic high that lasts from Halloween through Easter has certainly begun. Since the lipid-phobia of the late 80s, high-sugar candies like gummy bears, gum drops ...
Topics: agriculture, food, green living, health, holiday (all these topics)

Sour milk The Environment Report naively pushes Monsanto-related study praising rBGH	Tom Philpott	01 Oct 2008	Gristmill
I don't know much about Environment Report, a non-profit producer of radio reports about, uh, the environment. But I can't say I'm impressed by its recent piece on recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), the genetically modified "feed enhancer" for dairy cows that Monsanto recently sold to Eli Lilly. In it (transcript here), reporter Shawn Allee sets up a contrast between a Chicago health-food store owner and a Cornell scientist. The health food guy cites ...
Topics: livestock, Big Ag, scientific research, food, agriculture, mainstream media (all these topics)

Erring on the side of 'heirloom' Greenwashing our vegetable modifiers	Laura Hess	01 Oct 2008	Gristmill
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner at a renowned restaurant in San Francisco, when I noticed something a bit troubling on the menu. According to the description, the 'Heirloom Tomato Salad' was made with a mix of Sweet 100 and Sungold tomatoes -- both of which are hybrid varieties. OK, big deal, they made a mistake. Well, two weeks later, I stopped at a farm stand advertising heirloom tomatoes, and sure enough, the alleged heirlooms were hybrids. All th ...
Topics: messaging, advertising, greenwashing, agriculture, food (all these topics)

Meat and Dairy, Quite Contrary Cutting meat and milk consumption cuts CO2 emissions, study says		01 Oct 2008	News
Posted at 6:41 AM on 01 Oct 2008 Happy World Vegetarian Day! Just in time for the festivities, a new study from the Food Climate Research Network finds that cutting down on meat and milk consumption can help cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The four-year study focused mainly on the U.K., concluding that dramatically cutting the average Briton's weekly meat and milk intake could help reduce emissions sin ...
Topics: agriculture, climate, food, green living, news, scientific research, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics)

Brazil Nuts Amazon deforestation soars, Brazil blames its own land-reform agency		30 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 1:38 PM on 30 Sep 2008 The 100 individuals or companies most responsible for Amazon deforestation since 2005 were listed Monday by Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc, and Brazil's own land-reform agency took the top spot. The Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform was said to be culpable for the deforestation of 850 square miles of Amazon rainforest in the last three years. Everyone on the ...
Topics: agriculture, Amazon, Brazil, deforestation, news, rainforests (all these topics)

Plate Tectonics On shifting to vegetarianism	Umbra Fisk	29 Sep 2008	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, I recently became a vegetarian for environmental reasons. Everyone says I should start eating soy products and tofu. But doesn't soy come from evil industrial farms in Iowa? I thought the idea was to increase biodiversity, not just eat the same thing 20 different ways. Also, can I keep eating eggs and milk? Ben T. New Hampshire Dearest Ben, Why are people so dang bossy about food? There's a vein of "food as ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food, green living, greenhouse-gas emissions, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics)

ReGeneration Roadtrip: Victory is ours Visiting the Victory Garden outside San Francisco City Hall	Sarah van Schagen	26 Sep 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest post from my travel partner, Todd Dwyer, head blogger for Dell's ReGeneration.org, where the piece originally appeared. ----- Sarah and I have been having a blast so far learning about what people are doing right now to save the planet. Not only have we been treated to the new ways of thinking and innovations being made to this end, but we have also spoken to people who are looking to past generations for more environmentally responsi ...
Topics: San Francisco, sustainable ag, local food, food, agriculture, video, ReGeneration Roadtrip (all these topics)

Thought for Food Gates Foundation wants to boost local agriculture in developing nations		25 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 3:50 PM on 25 Sep 2008 Local agriculture in developing nations will get a boost under an initiative unveiled Wednesday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and United Nations World Food Program. Under the Purchase for Progress initiative, the WFP will supplement food aid with surplus crops bought at competitive prices from poor farmers. WFP currently purchases 80 percent of its food in develop ...
Topics: Africa, agriculture, food, local food, news, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Pollute-ocracy Why factory farming must be stopped	Jason D Scorse	25 Sep 2008	Gristmill
This is sobering: single concentrated animal feedlots that create more waste than a large U.S. city. There is only one word for this: insane. If you're going to eat meat, don't support industrial meat operations.
Topics: insanity, agriculture, food (all these topics)

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)

Bringing farming home Thoughts on an 'urban farm tour' in Carrboro, N.C.	Tom Philpott	24 Sep 2008	Gristmill
The Farm Tour culminates at Carrboro Community Garden. Photo: Maciek Kryzystoforski What's a farm? I don't want to get buried in technical definitions, but I'll take a stab at an informal one: a substantial piece of productive land. When I step out my front door in Carrboro, N.C. -- where I spend part of my time -- I see plenty of plenty of open land, much of it planted in what might be seen as a cover crop: grass. Of course, the land isn't contiguous. Stree ...
Topics: North Carolina, local food, food, agriculture, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Annals of regulatory malfeasance GAO: EPA has seriously botched CAFO oversight	Tom Philpott	24 Sep 2008	Gristmill
Is the EPA leadership incompetent or malicious? The agency's steady stream of oversights, lapses, and rotten decisions -- which I tried to come to grips with here -- demands a reckoning. The answer appears to be a kind of toxic mix of the two: a malicious desire to please industry interests over public ones, leavened by a dose of sheer idiocy. The GAO has come out with a report confirming what everyone who has ever been near a factory animal farm (aka, a concentrate ...
Topics: agriculture, food, livestock, regulation, toxics, US EPA, waste (all these topics)

Mad About Poo EPA slipping up on pollution control from factory farms, report says		24 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 5:07 AM on 24 Sep 2008 The U.S. EPA has failed to control pollution from factory farms and has also been sluggish in determining risks to human health from huge concentrated animal-feeding operations, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. In recent years, the GAO said, consolidation in the livestock industry has spawned more and more factory farms that have also expanded i ...
Topics: agriculture, air pollution, news, US EPA (all these topics)

Way to Grow! Urban farmer awarded 'genius' grant		23 Sep 2008	News
Posted at 9:35 AM on 23 Sep 2008 Will Allen. Urban farmer Will Allen has been named one of this year's recipients of the prestigious "genius" grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The grant recognizes Allen's work bringing affordable fresh produce and quality grass-fed meats to the urban poor and educating communities about sustainable farming. Allen co-founded the group Growing Power in Milwaukee in the early '9 ...
Topics: agriculture, brilliance, food, gardening, green living, local food, news, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Will Allen: urban farmer, 'genius' Milwaukee's Growing Power founder snags a much-deserved MacArthur	Tom Philpott	23 Sep 2008	Gristmill
Fifteen years ago, a former professional basketball player named Will Allen made a most unlikely career move: he decided to launch a farm in a low-income neighborhood in Milwaukee. His farmhands would be un- or ill-employed neighborhood teens. Will Allen. At the time, brutal economic conditions were pushing the nation's few remaining African-American farmers into bankruptcy; and the concept of "urban farming" seemed more like an oxymoron than an a ...
Topics: brilliance, loal food, food, agriculture (all these topics)

Slow Food vs. Monsanto Michael Pollan and Monanto's Hugh Grant square off at Google.org forum	Tom Philpott	22 Sep 2008	Gristmill
What do you get when industrial agriculture's most famous critic crosses swords with industrial agriculture's (arguably) most powerful executive? Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant squared off at a forum put on recently by google.org (video below the fold.) The topic of the discussion: how to 'feed the world' as population expands over the next 20 years.What happens during the debate? Sparks fly, but neither deals a body blow. Deploying his his lilting Scottish ...
Topics: Big Ag, agriculture, industrial ag, Michael Pollan, video, GMOs (all these topics)

Wheat and ethanol: They just don't mix New research shows that ethanol will continue to increase the cost of wheat	Meredith Niles	19 Sep 2008	Gristmill
I, like most Americans, love bread. Crusty, warm, and fresh-baked bread is a carb overload I am willing to indulge in even if it means a few extra minutes of running. But the American love affair with all things baked might be at jeopardy. We all know that oil and water don't mix, but it's becoming increasingly clear that wheat and ethanol are a bad combination as well. New research from the University of Illinois indicates that the high prices for wheat, as well as ...
Topics: ethanol, biofuels, scientific research, food, agriculture (all these topics)

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