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RESULTS		Results 551 – 575 of 645
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
The Revolution Will Be Criticized Why the new 'Green Revolution' in Africa may be misguided	Tom Philpott	27 Sep 2006	Victual Reality
Why the new "Green Revolution" in Africa may be misguided By Tom Philpott 27 Sep 2006 In a bid to move "tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty" and "significantly" reduce hunger, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has teamed with the Rockefeller Foundation to launch a new "Green Revolution" in Africa. These high-profile foundations have committed a combined $150 million toward fulfilling their admirable ...
Topics: Africa, agriculture, industrial ag, international politics, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Romance, made in China The Times a bit too flowery on China's growing rose industry	Kate Sheppard	25 Sep 2006	Gristmill
China is positioning itself to take the lead in world rose production. Government leaders hope investing in the flower industry will bring capital and jobs to southwestern China, and florists in the U.S. see it as an opportunity to obtain cheaper products, thereby increasing profits. Workers in the burgeoning rose industry are mostly young women, earning an average of $25 per month, which the NYT article at least points out. Missing from the piece, though, is any thou ...
Topics: agriculture, China (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)

Bad day for organics? E. Coli news is bad news, any way you cut it	Chip Giller	15 Sep 2006	Gristmill
Grim headlines for organics, as the feds are linking Natural Selection Foods (Earthbound Farm) and its prepackaged fresh organic spinach to an outbreak of E. coli in many states.If the linkage is confirmed, I bet we'll be hearing a lot from organics skeptics (including chief skeptic Dennis Avery), who'll do their darnedest to say that organic food on the whole is a scary thing (inputs like cow manure may contain contaminants and dirt is, you know, dirty!). And we'll prob ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, local food, organic 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)

Environmentalism and animal rights: philosophical differences, common goals The activists among us should remember that there's plenty to do together	David Roberts	11 Sep 2006	Gristmill
I hope everyone's been following the discussion on animal rights and environmentalism. I continue to be impressed with the decency and thoughtfulness of the community that's gathered here. Frogfish said most of what needed to be said. The unit of analysis for conservationism is population; for animal rights it is the individual. If you ask me, animal rights is morally bankrupt in the absence of environmentalism -- not the other way around. But we should all remem ...
Topics: agriculture, animal welfare, industrial ag (all these topics)

USDA on 'grass-fed' cows: confine 'em and let 'em eat corn stalks A brazen move from an agency shot through with industry players.	Tom Philpott	06 Sep 2006	Gristmill
Cows that feed solely on pasture perform a valuable service: they transform what's inedible to us -- grass -- into a rich source of protein and other nutrients. And when such cows are raised in moderate numbers, they can actually improve the health and biodiversity of grasslands. Moreover, cows evolved to eat grass, so the pasture model is clearly the most animal-friendly way to create beef. To me, the grass-fed concept exemplifies responsible agrarianism: it's energy ...
Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, organic food (all these topics)

Sucker Lunch It's time to get serious about reforming school lunches	Tom Philpott	06 Sep 2006	Victual Reality
Playground bullies aren't the only ones shaking down kids for their milk money. Despite lots of recent fuss about the poor quality of school-cafeteria fare -- and mounting evidence of widespread diet-related maladies among kids -- corporate interests are still lining up for their cut of the cash the federal government and families spend on feeding kids at school. Did you want fries with that? Pho ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, Department of Agriculture, education, health, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Cold Comfort Farm Could small farms provide fresh food year-round, even in northern climes?	Tom Philpott	30 Aug 2006	Victual Reality
Is the sustainable-agriculture movement essentially Luddite? It's a common charge -- and a fair enough question. The Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, perhaps industrial agriculture's greatest living apologist, deplores at every opportunity the organic movement's supposedly technophobic ways. Addressing a graduating class a few years ago at Texas A&M -- that factory for fu ...
Topics: ag subsidies, agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, local food, sustainable ag, 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)

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood Why 'the market' alone can't save local agriculture	Tom Philpott	16 Aug 2006	Victual Reality
Why "the market" alone can't save local agriculture By Tom Philpott 16 Aug 2006 The local-food movement has reached an interesting juncture. Through one lens, things are looking better than ever. According to a USDA report (PDF), the number of farmers' markets leapt 79 percent to 3,100 between 1994 and 2002. Community-supported agriculture programs -- wherein consumers buy a share of a farm's output before the season starts, sharing the risks and rew ...
Topics: agriculture, business, CSAs, farmers markets, food, local food, sustainable ag, Victual Reality, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

Reform ag subsidies, but don't plow them under Why the late, lamented Doha round wasn't really the answer for ag policy.	Tom Philpott	07 Aug 2006	Gristmill
Harvesting a bit of vintage Reagan-era rhetoric, L.A. Times columnist Jonah Goldberg recently denounced what he called 'welfare queens on tractors.' The right-winger's target was clear: The U.S. farm subsidy program, which doles out around $14.5 billion per year (depending on market fluctuations), mainly to large producers of corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans, and rice. As Congress opens debate on the 2007 Farm Bill -- the omnibus five-year legislation that governs agricu ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, food (all these topics)

China's shrinking farmland As China's exports boom, its farmland shrinks and food imports rise. Coincidence?	Tom Philpott	04 Aug 2006	Gristmill
The philosopher Slavoj Zizek once remarked that the United States does still have a working class -- it's simply in China. With the U.S. manufacturing base shriveling (Ford Explorer, anyone?) and imports from China booming (set to surpass a quarter trillion dollars this year), it's hard to contradict that trendy Slovenian academic. China's manufacturing miracle means (among many other things) that even in a period of stagnant wage growth, U.S. consumers can march into ...
Topics: agriculture, China (all these topics)

Sour milk The case for boycotting factory-farmed 'organic' milk	Tom Philpott	02 Aug 2006	Gristmill
Of all the environmental gaffes the species homo sapien commits in the process of feeding itself, the practice of cramming megafauna into huge pens and plying them with corn may rank as the most imbecilic. The excellent web site Eat Wild documents the environmental ills of confinement dairy and meat production; here are a few. Cows evolved to eat prairie grass, not grain, which makes them sick. Huge concentrations of large ravenous animals create huge concentrations o ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

How now organic cow? USDA will soon decide how much pasture time organic dairy cows should get	Lisa Hymas	11 Jul 2006	Gristmill
With demand for organic milk soaring, the stakes are high in the debate over what exactly 'organic milk' is -- and that debate will soon be settled, at least from a legal standpoint, by the USDA's National Organic Program. As Samuel Fromartz writes in The Rocky Mountain News, the NOP is now considering a proposed regulation that would require all organic dairy farms to meet a certain standard for letting their cows out into pasture. Current USDA regulations only require t ...
Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, organic food (all these topics)

Ag Reflex Factory farms let off the hook for water pollution, activists say	Amanda Griscom Little	30 Jun 2006	Muckraker
The Bush administration wants to let factory farms determine whether the animal excreta that oozes from their facilities into waterways should be regulated, environmentalists say -- and they argue that the plan, well, stinks. The cow factor. Photo: iStockphoto. Agriculture has long been a top source of water pollution in the U.S., but in the last two decades the scale of the problem h ...
Topics: agriculture, industrial ag, Muckraker, politics, regulation, US EPA, water pollution (all these topics)

Mackey v. Pollan	David Roberts	20 Jun 2006	Gristmill
Foodie journalist Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (review here; interview with Pollan here) makes some disturbing points about the increasingly industrial character of organic agriculture. It uses as its exemplar of "industrial organic" the burgeoning Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey took quite a bit of umbrage at that, and responded with a long, passionate letter about the work his store has done to nurture the organic mov ...
Topics: agriculture, business, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

Hooray natural fibers, and please don't eat the sheep Wool and silk pass the test.	Todd Hymas Samkara	14 Jun 2006	Gristmill
Vindication is a strange animal (like unto a marmot, or maybe an echidna) creeping up where one least expects it. Such as the BBC yesterday. A fan, nay, a necessary devotee of natural-fiber clothing (see: Multiple Chemical Sensitivities), I often get flak from fellow outdoorspeople for outdoorsifying in non-synthetics. Especially so on high-altitude peaks in Colorado. But, newsflash, people: natural fibers like wool and silk, when worn correctly in layers, can ho ...
Topics: agriculture, fashion, food, green living (all these topics)

You are positively glowing this evening, my dear Champagne vineyards threatened by radioactive contamination	Corey McKrill	05 Jun 2006	Gristmill
Global warming isn't the only thing threatening wine. In France, groundwater less than 10 km from the famous Champagne vineyards has tested positive for radioactive contamination, caused by a nearby leaking nuclear waste dump:'We have been told for decades that nuclear dumpsites will not leak and that the best standards are being applied. In reality the dumpsite in Normandy is a disaster, and radioactivity is already leaking from the dumpsite in Champagne,' said Shaun ...
Topics: agriculture, energy, food, France, nuclear power, waste (all these topics)

Eat the Press An interview with foodie author Michael Pollan	David Roberts	31 May 2006	Main Dish
Michael Pollan has built a reputation as a sleuthing agro-journalist. In his writing for The New York Times Magazine and a quartet of books, he's trailed a steer from birth to dinner plate, traced America's obesity epidemic to corn subsidies, and narrowly, fumblingly outwitted a small-town cop who came uncomfortably close to his marijuana patch. His writing -- an engaging m�lange of travelogue, economic ana ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, interview, local food, organic food (all these topics)

Pollan blogs on corn ethanol and local-food resources	David Roberts	26 May 2006	Gristmill
Did you know that foodie writer Michael Pollan (look for my interview on Tuesday!) has a blog? Probably not, because it's hidden behind the cursed NYT Select subscription wall. Too bad -- it's a great blog, and deserves wider readership. The latest entry reviews arguments against corn ethanol that will be familiar to readers of this blog, and concludes with this: So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we have so much of it, and such a powerful lob ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, ethanol, food, local food, organic food (all these topics)

South Central Community Farm update	David Roberts	26 May 2006	Gristmill
If you haven't been keeping up: The situation at the South Central Community Farm has gotten even more grim. The farmers have received an eviction order. A variety of celebs and quasi-celebs and hippie ex-celebs have taken up direct action, camping out on the farm. Julia Butterfly Hill is even sitting up in a tree. It's not looking good. Go give them some money. (Meanwhile, the same city that can't cough up $10 million for this community farm is contemplating spe ...
Topics: agriculture, Los Angeles, placemaking (all these topics)

dh love life: emergency episode Save South Central Farm	Chris Schults	22 May 2006	Gristmill
Over at Daryl Hannah's vlog, dh love life, she's posted an 'emergency episode' about the plight of the South Central Farm that Dave blogged about recently. Watch it now. (Damn, those fruits and veggies look good!)
Topics: agriculture, celebrity, food, Los Angeles (all these topics)

Beyond organic: A new label	David Roberts	15 May 2006	Gristmill
If you haven't been following the discussion under this post about Wal-Mart selling organic food, I recommend you catch up. It's quite insightful, with a range of views well-expressed. One note of consensus seems to be this: "Organic," at least as denoted by the USDA label, falls well short of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Tom is better qualified than I to give a comprehensive description of the latter, but one important element is locality. Food that ...
Topics: agriculture, food, local food, organic food, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

How to make Wal-Mart's organic push not matter An innovative Alabama CSA shows the way forward.	Tom Philpott	15 May 2006	Gristmill
When Wal-Mart announced plans to become the world's biggest purveyor of organically grown food last week, the polite applause from the enviro gallery grated on my ears. (Here's a spirited recent debate on Gristmill.) Even the New York Times editorial page could see through this move. While some greens cooed at at Wal-Mart's magnamity, the Grey Lady unleashed an appropriately cynical analysis: There is no chance that Wal-Mart will be buying from small, local organic fa ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food, sustainable ag, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

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