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RESULTS		Results 501 – 525 of 702
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Soil: The secret solution to global warming A nifty video	David Roberts	27 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Quantum Shift TV has made a video about the coming farm bill called "Soil: The Secret Solution to Global Warming.' It opens with Canadian superstar farmer Percy Schmeiser, and segues into a smart discussion of farm bill politics. It's about 9 min. long. Check it out:
Topics: agriculture, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Drink Me A New Orleans transplant traces the source of his tap water	Wayne Curtis	26 Jun 2007	Dispatches
is a freelance writer who's written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Preservation, and American Heritage, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. He recently traded Maine winters for New Orleans summers. Dispatch: 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 Tuesday, 26 Jun 2007 NEW ORLEANS, La. I was hiding out from New Orleans' early summer heat in a Magazine Street bar ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Oil, Dispatches, Louisiana, Mississippi River, placemaking, severe weather, urban planning, water pollution, wetlands (all these topics)

Moscow on the Cud Sign Russian capital introduces label for GM-free food		25 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Moscow on the Cud Sign Russian capital introduces label for GM-free food Now you can have your GM-free borscht and read it, too: next week, the city of Moscow will debut a groundbreaking label for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients. Under the leadership of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the city has devised a voluntary system of testing and labeling that will allow products to carry a GM-free label for a y ...
Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, news, Russia (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)

Orange You Glad We Didn't Say Switchgrass? Fruit may be the latest source for biofuel madness		21 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Orange You Glad We Didn't Say Switchgrass? Fruit may be the latest source for biofuel madness Could your kumquat power your Kia? A team of U.S. scientists has made a low-carbon fuel from fructose, the sugar in many fruits. It could be a better bet than ethanol, with 40 percent more energy, less vulnerability to water, and more stability; since it can also be made from plant cellulose, it could also skirt the foo ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, energy, food, news (all these topics)

The Hand That Feeds Don't blame farmers for the farm-subsidy mess	Tom Philpott	21 Jun 2007	Victual Reality
Agricultural and food products are not like other commodities. Their price is that of life, and below a certain threshold, that of death. -- Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart, A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis Last month, after Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini dared question the virtue of certain U.S. farmers, many sustainable-agriculture proponents lashed out ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, Victual Reality (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)

Scarce Fell On Alabama Crops, neighborly relations suffer in Southeastern U.S. drought		19 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Scarce Fell On Alabama Crops, neighborly relations suffer in Southeastern U.S. drought A severe drought is gripping most of the Southeastern U.S., threatening crops, inspiring prayer, and turning neighbors against each other. "It's one of the worst droughts in living memory in the Southeast at this point," said Doug LeComte, a drought specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ...
Topics: agriculture, climate, news, severe weather (all these topics)

Understatement of the week	Kit Stolz	17 Jun 2007	Gristmill
A federal judge tells the Bush administration that, yes, there is a difference between wild fish and farmed fish. 'A healthy hatchery population is not necessarily an indication of a healthy natural population,' [Judge Coughenour] said.Insert your insult here ...
Topics: agriculture, aquaculture, fishing, food (all these topics)

Not (entirely) USDA-approved Even USDA researchers are a bit creeped out by corporate control of food	Tom Philpott	15 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Food production and retailing have gotten so squarely under the heel of a few corporations that even the USDA is raising an eyebrow. At the top, the agency teems with PR flacks for the agribusiness giants. But that doesn't mean there aren't competent researchers among the rank and file. One of them, Steven W. Martinez, has issued a useful report (PDF) on consolidation in the food industry. On page 21, a chart reveals that in 1972, the four largest milk processors ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag (all these topics)

Nothing busted but our chops How the 2007 Farm Bill can help restore market competition	Aimee Witteman	13 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Are federal authorities finally taking the idea that a few companies shouldn't be allowed to dominate the food system seriously? Well, the Federal Trade Commission recently blocked Whole Foods from gobbling up rival natural foods marketer Wild Oats. Congratulations to the FTC for busting up the natural-foods trust! But even combined, Whole Foods and Wild Oats would account for only 15 percent of natural-foods sales. Meanwhile, Smithfield Foods alone now controls ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Congress, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, food, politics (all these topics)

Phosphorus Is Bad Phor Us Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' still large and in charge		12 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Phosphorus Is Bad Phor Us Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" still large and in charge As happens every spring, billions of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural fertilizer have made their way down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, invigorating massive algae blooms that suck up oxygen and create a massive "dead zone." In 2001, a task force appoint ...
Topics: agriculture, industrial ag, Mississippi River, news, water pollution (all these topics)

Ignorance like this is how biofuels schemes prosper Food? Farms? No connection at all!	JMG	11 Jun 2007	Gristmill
From the BBC: The Linking Environment And Farming organisation found that 22% of 1,073 adults questioned did not know bacon and sausages originate from farms ... The survey also found four in 10 people did not know yoghurt is made using farm produce, nearly half were unaware the raw ingredients for beer start off in farmers' fields and 23% did not know bread's main ingredients came from the farm. (I'm not pinging on the Brits; I'm sure the U.S. is even worse.)
Topics: agriculture, food, United Kingdom (all these topics)

Dumping the sour 'organic' milk Dairy farmers' organic practices called into question	Samuel Fromartz	10 Jun 2007	Gristmill
Regulation might not be the best way to create greener markets, but the right sort of regulations enforced the right way can work. That's a lesson in the organic market, which witnessed a first this week: a mega-organic dairy with 10,000 cows (3,500 'organic'), which was clearly skirting regulations, was suspended by a certifier and no longer allowed to sell 'organic' milk.I blogged on this development over at Chews Wise, and only bring it up here because the orga ...
Topics: agriculture, food, organic food (all these topics)

Soil is blowing in the wind Global warming, agriculture, and fossil fuels	Jon Rynn	06 Jun 2007	Gristmill
In the article 'A Perennial Search for Perfect Wheat' in yesterday's New York Times science section, writer Jim Robbins highlights one of the slow-moving global disasters of our age: the destruction of the world's soils. This in turn is part of a wider problem: global ecosystem destruction, including depleted oceans, cleared forests, and overgrazed grasslands. As for erosion, Robbins writes:Erosion is the big problem. Scientists say that an average of 12 tons of soil are ...
Topics: agriculture, fossil fuels, industrial ag (all these topics)

Democracy, food, and the Farm Bill Threatening local control in our food system	Steph Larsen	04 Jun 2007	Gristmill
When the Democrats took control of Congress, a colleague of mine looked at me with a sigh of relief and said, 'Isn't it great that we won't have to be playing defense against bad policy anymore?' If only that first impression were the case. In a democracy, we shouldn't have to be constantly vigilant for bad legislative ideas that could hurt the public good. Our legislators are supposed to be the filter that guards against schemes that would strip rights and take choi ...
Topics: agriculture, Congress, food, legislation, politics (all these topics)

The new conservatism: Like the old totalitarianism Whatever happened to local control is good?	JMG	02 Jun 2007	Gristmill
From Organic Consumers:Failing to suppress grassroots control over food safety laws and labels in the last session of Congress, industry has now called on their friends in the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry to slip a similar poison pill into an obscure section of the voluminous 2007-2012 Farm Bill. The provision would give the White House appointed Secretary of Agriculture the power to eliminate local or state food and farming laws, such as those in four Cal ...
Topics: agriculture, Congress, food, politics (all these topics)

Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Pesticide-Free Garden Pesticide exposure increases risk of Parkinson's disease, study says		01 Jun 2007	Daily Grist
Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Pesticide-Free Garden Pesticide exposure increases risk of Parkinson's disease, study says A new study from researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland concludes that pesticide exposure increases the risk of getting Parkinson's disease, a degenerative condition affecting the nervous system. Patients from five European countries participated in the study, published in the Journal ...
Topics: agriculture, health, news, toxics (all these topics)

Scientists create new crop of genetically modified crops Pesticide efficacy is decreasing	Maywa Montenegro	31 May 2007	Gristmill
If you've ever colored Easter eggs -- I mean the old-fashioned way, with food-coloring, not with those plastic wraparounds -- then you know that when you mess up, you have two options: rinse them off with some white vinegar and start over, or forge ahead, layer even more color on top, and hope that something presentable emerges. Okay, so that metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but that's what came to mind when I read, earlier this week, that scientists at the Univers ...
Topics: agriculture, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics)

All so predictable, part 2 World grain supplies tanking	biodiversivist	31 May 2007	Gristmill
Once again, a prediction is panning out(PDF): The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses. Every six years, we're adding to the world the equivalent of a North American population. We're trying to feed those extra people, feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production can't keep up. The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest leve ...
Topics: agriculture, food (all these topics)

Yuppy chow, food miles, and labels Interesting juxtaposition of stories	JMG	31 May 2007	Gristmill
Interesting juxtaposition of stories: First, an essay on what has become of organics, as it turns into what Fromartz calls 'Organic, Inc.' Then, Energy Bulletin links to a story suggesting that some Brits might deny the organic label to food flown in from abroad. And, of course, there's the post right here on Gristmill about labeling as an attempt to help consumers understand the effect of their purchases. The issue boils down to the fact that our prices don't help con ...
Topics: agriculture, food, local food, organic food, sustainable ag (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)

News from the Farm Bill front Democracy in jeopardy	Steph Larsen	24 May 2007	Gristmill
In a recent post about the timing of the Farm Bill, I talked about when things related to farm and food policy are likely to move in Congress. There is new information available now, and it's becoming increasingly clear that we all could be in serious trouble if we don't act now to voice our opinion about the state of our food system. Though pressure to consider major reforms in the bill is as strong as ever, events of this week are leaving me with much less hope that n ...
Topics: agriculture, Congress, legislation, politics (all these topics)

Postcard From the New Atlantis On moving to New Orleans, a city defined by water	Wayne Curtis	24 May 2007	Dispatches
is a freelance writer who's written for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Preservation, and American Heritage, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. He recently traded Maine winters for New Orleans summers. Dispatch: 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 Thursday, 24 May 2007 NEW ORLEANS, La Someone once wrote that eating a tomato grown on a fire escape dem ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Oil, Dispatches, Louisiana, Mississippi River, placemaking, severe weather, urban planning, water pollution, wetlands (all these topics)

Mongabay highlights for May '07 Good reading on Mongabay	biodiversivist	23 May 2007	Gristmill
There is so much good stuff over there I hardly know where to start. You might consider subscribing to the weekly email. Top of the list is an interview with Luke Hunter (the same biologist I pissed off with my pincushion post). Coincidentally, roughly a fifth of the interview dealt with that topic: ... does conservation of the species require radio-tagging? There are many, many cases where it does not. I often read proposals by graduate students who are wishing to ...
Topics: agriculture, biodiversity, biofuels, endangered species, energy, ethanol, wildlife (all these topics)

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