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| Headline |
Author |
Published |
Section |
Crisis and opportunity in the farm belt
Sen. Grassley: Screw conservation, let's grow more corn! |
Tom Philpott |
02 Jul 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Here in the U.S., our grocery bills are rising faster than they have since Gerald Ford bumbled about the Oval Office. Across the globe, the recent surge in crop prices is putting sufficient food out of reach of millions of people. The dismal human dimension of the food crisis has been amply (if sporadically) covered by the media. But its budding ecological component has gotten short shrift. The price surge has inspired a virtual tsunami of agrichemicals to be spilled on ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, industrial ag, Iowa, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Milkin' It
More use of growth hormones would boost sustainability of dairy industry, says study |
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01 Jul 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 2:00 PM on 01 Jul 2008 Shooting up cows with artificial growth hormones increases the sustainability of the dairy industry, claims a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Giving rbST to 1 million cows would enable the same amount of milk to be produced using 157,000 fewer cows," says the study, thus easing the impact that giant dairy-cow operatio ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, air pollution, food, health, industrial ag, news, scientific research, water pollution (all these topics) |
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Not Just for White People Anymore
How the organic movement can regain its relevance |
Tom Philpott |
27 Jun 2008 |
Victual Reality |
| Buying organic makes you feel good ... but does it make you think? On June 25, I spoke at the Organic Summit in Boulder, Colo., to an audience consisting largely of people who work in the organic food industry. This column is an adapted version of my talk. In his wildly popular satirical blog Stuff White People Like, the Canadian writer Christian Lander recently made some tart observat ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, organic food, shopping, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics) |
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Fish and pigs and chickens, oh my!
Farm animals consume 17 percent of wild-caught fish |
Erik Hoffner |
27 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Here's a guest post from Jennifer Jacquet of the Sea Around Us Project and the UBC Fisheries Centre in Vancouver, B.C. ----- It is one thing to grind up wild fish to feed to farmed fish, but it is quite another to grind up these perfectly edible fish to feed factory-farmed pigs and poultry. After all, when is the last time you saw a chicken catch a fish? In the not-so-distant past, pigs and chickens ate grass, some grains, and food scraps. Today, in the throes of a ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, fishing, food (all these topics) |
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Amazin' maize
Corn tries to look a little too sweet |
Meredith Niles |
27 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| This week's $4.8 billion merger of Corn Products International and Bunge Ltd. probably didn't catch your eye, but with revenues projected to increase 29 percent this year to $4 billion, you might consider paying attention -- for the sake of your belly and the environment. Corn syrup manufacturers are going on the offensive -- and that includes a charm offensive. The Corn Refiners Association -- an industry trade group -- launched a new marketing campaign yester ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics) |
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Flood, Sweat, and a Good Trout Mousse
Iowa's chefs and their farmer-suppliers get busy recovering from disaster |
Kurt Michael Friese |
26 Jun 2008 |
Chef's Diary |
| Roads and restaurants may be closed, but Iowa is getting back on its feet. Photo: Kurt Michael Friese The weather here in Iowa City has been gorgeous for more than a week. Is Mother Nature trying to make amends? While she smiles on us, she's still causing trouble for our friends to the south. The horrendous flooding continues, breeching nearly every l ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Chef's Diary, food, green living, recipes, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Nitrogen madness
The costs of unsustainable agriculture |
Erik Hoffner |
25 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Here's a guest post from Rodale Institute CEO Tim LaSalle. ----- Tom Philpott is right to highlight the tremendous ecological debt we've built up by depending on nitrogen fertilizer to run our crop production system. Depending on mined and fossil-fuel produced nitrogen for our food is no more sustainable than depending on peaking oil and mountain-top removed coal for our energy. There's no more 'cheap' food and fuel, because, really, there never was. The huge i ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food, sustainable ag (all these topics) |
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Pass the Sugar, Sugar
Florida will buy out sugar company to restore Everglades |
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24 Jun 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 3:22 PM on 24 Jun 2008 Nearly 300 square miles of sugar plantation in the Everglades will once again become marsh, as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced Tuesday that the state will buy the land from U.S. Sugar Corp. If all goes to plan, the $1.75 billion deal may be the largest environmental restoration in the history of the United States. Environmentalists have long lamented the sugar industry's role in ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Florida, habitat protection, industrial ag, national parks, news, progress, wetlands (all these topics) |
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Pyongyang syndrome
Agriculture and energy solutions to avoid the fate of North Korea |
Sharon Astyk |
24 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| John Feffer has a good article over at Asia Times Online. It points out the deep danger we're in -- how teetery both the world and America's food and energy systems are. It is well worth a read, particularly because of its clear articulation of the bind we're in -- the strategies we've used in the past to get out of disaster will only accelerate collapse in the long-term.. The tools we're using to get more food out of the ground take food from the future. The ana ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, biofuels, energy, North Korea, organic food (all these topics) |
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Check Mate, CheckMate
California officials yank controversial urban spraying plan |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, California, health, news, San Francisco, toxics (all these topics) |
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One expensive cocktail
The toll of the shrimping industry on Southeast Asia |
Erik Hoffner |
20 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Southeast Asia would have fared better during the tsunami and the recent cyclone if the majority of the region's coastal mangrove forests were intact. Everyone accepts that. But many of the mangroves have been cut for firewood, largely to make way for shrimp farming. The cost of the mangrove-loss to coastal fisheries is great, since much of the food chain spends its early years amongst the trees' roots. But the human cost, besides those lost in the flood waters, is al ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, aquaculture, fishing, food, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Flood money
Midwest woes a boon to fertilizer companies |
Tom Philpott |
19 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| The recent Midwestern floods have caused all manner of misery: Burst levies, lost homes, ruined crops, higher food prices, a gusher of agrichemicals and god know what else flowing into streams. One way to soothe the sting is to own shares in giant fertilizer companies like Potash Corp. of Saskatewan and Mosaic. These companies have seen their share prices jump over the past week. Investors may be bidding them up because the floods represent a sales opportunity. To ma ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, food, industrial ag, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Missouri mystery
Why are sperm counts so low in the show-me state? |
Tom Philpott |
19 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Surrounded by agriculture powerhouses Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois, Missouri sits at the southern edge of the heartland. Are the region's titanic annual lashings of agrichemicals -- synthetic and mined fertilizers, as well as poisons designed to kill bugs, weeds, and mold -- leaching into drinking water and doing creepy things to the state's citizens? And what about manure from the stunning concentration of concentrated-animal feedlot operations ... |
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| Topics: Agriculture, health, Missouri, toxics, water pollution (all these topics) |
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When We Reign, It Pours
Humans have a hand in Midwest flooding |
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19 Jun 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 8:41 AM on 19 Jun 2008 Photo: Mark Hirsch How much responsibility do humans have for the floods disastrously deluging the Midwest? Of course the rain poured for days, but it fell on plowed-up prairies, drained fields, altered streams, no-longer-wetlands, and developed flood plains -- all unable to absorb precipitation to the best of their natural ability. Between 2007 and 2008, more than 160,000 acres of Iowa land (mostly ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Iowa, Missouri, news, placemaking, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Mother Earth's triple whammy
Why North Korea was a global crisis canary |
Guest author |
18 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| This is a guest essay from John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and the author of numerous articles on food policy and on North Korea. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is reprinted here with Tom's kind permission. ----- Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39 percent last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, energy, international politics, North Korea (all these topics) |
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Boon for bluefins
The European Union closes fishing season early |
Andrew Sharpless |
17 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| It's been said over and over again: Eastern bluefin tuna cannot handle the pressure they face from overfishing. These sleek and powerful fish are unlucky enough to be among the world's most coveted seafood species, and for years scientists have called for a moratorium as a last-ditch effort to save these genetically pure, irreplaceable creatures. While strict quotas have been in place for years, poor quota enforcement and illegal fishing have driven the bluefin ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, endangered species, European Union, fishing, international politics (all these topics) |
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After the deluge
As Midwest floods recede, what's being washed into the groundwater? |
Tom Philpott |
16 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Flooded road in eastern Iowa. Photo: Dan Patterson Things are grim in Iowa, arguably the epicenter of global industrial food production. If Iowa were a nation, it would be the globe's second-largest corn producer, behind only China. The state leads the U.S. [PDF] in the production of corn, hogs, and eggs, and ranks number two in soybeans.In short, it's a rotten place for a massive, flood-inducing early-summer deluge. Of the state's 99 counties, 24 have been ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, climate change impacts, health, industrial ag, Iowa, severe weather (all these topics) |
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Our Ruined Harvest
As corn and soy fields drown in rainwater, the food crisis deepens |
Tom Philpott |
13 Jun 2008 |
Victual Reality |
| A cornucopia of bad circumstances. Here in the United States, we grow 44 percent of the world's corn crop, and 38 percent of its soy. For the great bulk of that massive harvest, we rely on a single region: the Midwestern farm belt. And over the past couple of weeks, torrential rains have hammered that area, at a particularly sensitive time for its grand swath of corn and soybean pla ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, food, green living, severe weather, shopping, Victual Reality (all these topics) |
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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 ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics) |
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Gulf dead zone: Not getting smaller
As fertilizer flows from the Midwest, a vast algae bloom thrives below the Mississippi |
Tom Philpott |
12 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Every year since the early 1980s, a monstrous algae bloom has risen up in the Gulf of Mexico, fed by fertilizer runoff from Midwest farms. The nasty growth sucks oxygen from the ocean beneath it -- snuffing out sea life even as climate change and other human-induced factors threaten the globe's fish stocks. Ironically, as fish go belly up in the Gulf, the bulk of the corn and soy grown on Midwest farms ends up in feedlots to fatten the livestock that feed America's rav ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, biofuels, ethanol, fishing, Mississippi (all these topics) |
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Take My Breath Away
Fumes from Minn. dairy force neighbors to evacuate |
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11 Jun 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 3:25 PM on 11 Jun 2008 A giant dairy farm in Thief River Falls, Minn., is producing such noxious fumes that the state health department has advised nearby residents to evacuate. Excel Dairy's emissions of hydrogen sulfide have been calculated at 200 times the standard allowed by Minnesota law; neighbors' complaints include headaches, nausea, blurred vision, shortness of breath, and fatigue. "It's so strong and ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, air pollution, health, industrial ag, Minnesota, news, toxics (all these topics) |
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Corn polls
New surveys suggest changing views on biofuels |
Ron Steenblik |
11 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Biofuel policy has made it to the polls. Yesterday, the National Center for Public Policy Research, a nonprofit, non-partisan educational foundation based in Washington, D.C., released the results of a survey (PDF) conducted at the beginning of this month which claims to have found that most Americans -- 'including those in the Farm Belt' -- want Congress to reduce or eliminate the mandated use of corn ethanol. In response to the key question, 'What do you think Congr ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, biofuels, climate, energy, ethanol, European Union, politics (all these topics) |
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Attack of the killer tomatoes, national edition
Tomato salmonella scare hits the big time |
Tom Philpott |
11 Jun 2008 |
Gristmill |
| Insert everything I said in this post, except now the salmonella-tainted tomato scare has gone nationwide, whereas before, the FDA had been limiting its warning to Texas and New Mexico.Here is Associated Press: Federal officials hunted for the source of a salmonella outbreak in Connecticut and 16 other states linked to three types of raw tomatoes, while the list of supermarkets and restaurants yanking those varieties from shelves and menus grew. Meanwhile, ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, messaging, organic food (all these topics) |
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A Ruminant With a Phew!
Vaccine, nut oil may cut cow belching's contribution to climate change |
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11 Jun 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 7:29 AM on 11 Jun 2008 The worldwide race to quell livestock belching is on! Earlier this month, New Zealand researchers came one step closer to developing a vaccine that would reduce the methane emitted from belching livestock. Ruminant livestock burp and fart significant quantities of methane -- a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. "Our agricultural research o ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, climate, news, scientific research (all these topics) |
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Victoria Falling
Climate change, deforestation, erosion take toll on African landscape |
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10 Jun 2008 |
News |
| Posted at 3:01 PM on 10 Jun 2008 A new United Nations atlas depicts alarming changes to Africa's landscape. On a continent that produces a mere 4 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions, significant landmarks are taking a hit from climate change: Lake Chad and Lake Victoria are shrinking each year, and Mt. Kilimanjaro could be snow-free by 2020. The deforestation rate in Africa is twice the world aver ... |
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| Topics: Africa, agriculture, climate, climate change impacts, deforestation, news, United Nations (all these topics) |
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