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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Skewed View from the Berkeley Hills Why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters should quit celebrating food-price hikes	Tom Philpott	04 Apr 2008	Victual Reality
As their grocery bills rise, Americans should take comfort: the price they're paying for industrially produced food in the supermarket is starting to approach that of artisanally produced food at the farmers' market. And that might make more of them choose healthier, less environmentally destructive diets. At least, that's the message of an article in Wedne ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, consumerism, economy, food, health, local food, politics (all these topics)

Who owns your tomato? Another big horticultural seed company bought by Monsanto	Matthew Dillon	04 Apr 2008	Gristmill
When Monsanto buys into a market, they buy in big. In 2005, Monsanto's seed/genetic trait holdings were primarily in corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola. That year, they purchased Seminis, the world's largest vegetable seed company (see And We Have the Seed) specializing in seed for vegetable field crops. Now their takeover of the vegetable seed sector continues, as they have announced the intent to purchase the Dutch breeding and seed company, De Ruiter Seeds.This pur ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, Department of Justice, food, industrial ag, regulation (all these topics)

Against the grain: What are they thinking? Part 2 Time bashes grain ethanol	Joseph Romm	03 Apr 2008	Gristmill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. ----- All that glitters is not gold. And all that grows is not green. That is the belated realization about grain ethanol -- in fact, about any ethanol whose feedstock is grown on cropland. Joe Romm has done a good job posting on this issue, including his report on the recent studies featured in Science magazine. I'd like to weigh in with a few add ...
Topics: agriculture, cellulosic ethanol, deforestation, Department of Agriculture, energy, ethanol, magazines, renewable energy (all these topics)

The U.S. never had small government Taxes and public investment: less intrusive than alternatives	Gar Lipow	03 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Occasionally, as happened on one of my posts, someone will mention the early 20th century and before as a happy era when small government was the rule. These people are confusing low taxes with small government. Government has played a huge role in the U.S. since it became a nation. It's just that for much of its lifespan, the U.S. used military force to wipe out Native American nations and take their land. That extremely valuable land was then used to subsidize develop ...
Topics: agriculture, politics, public lands (all these topics)

U-boat sightings European biodiesel industry being bankrupted by loophole	biodiversivist	02 Apr 2008	Gristmill
They call them U-boats because they pull into a port just long enough to do a U-turn and head off to Europe. They stop just long enough to blend a touch of fuel into the tank so they can claim the government subsidy. Let's say you have a million gallons on board from, say, a palm oil plantation in Indonesia, or a soybean operation in South America. An hour or two after your arrival, your pockets are bulging with just short of a million U.S. taxpayer dollars. From the ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, economy, energy, fossil fuels, international politics, shenanigans (all these topics)

Got food? Farmworker Awareness Week is a chance to recognize the people whose labor means we can eat	Fawn Pattison	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
This is Farmworker Awareness Week, a time to support the millions of farmworkers whose labor puts food on every American table, and who work and live in some of the worst environmental conditions in our nation. It's estimated that 2 to 3 million farmworkers plant, tend, and harvest American crops every year. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are migrants who move from place to place following the harvest. Where I live, in North Carolina, migrant farmworkers are the ma ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, environmental justice, food, grassroots activism, health, toxics (all these topics)

Birds do it; bees do it NYT op-ed: pesticides wiping out songbirds	Tom Philpott	31 Mar 2008	Gristmill
When the little bluebird Who has never said a word Starts to sing Spring ... It is nature, that is all, Simply telling us to fall in love. -- Cole Porter, 'Let's Do It' The immortal refrain of an old Cole Porter chestnut -- 'birds do it; bees do it' -- has taken on an ominous ring. Evidently, songbirds have followed honeybees by engaging in a massive die-off. (Bats, whose mating rituals evidently didn't capture Porter's fancy, are dying off as well.)According t ...
Topics: agriculture, extinction, food, health, organic food, US EPA (all these topics)

More signs of the Apocalypse? Soy, corn, and wheat prices puzzling economists	Tia Ghose	30 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Just in case you weren't worried about rising food prices, The New York Times has an article out that makes the food markets seem even more volatile. Apparently, identical bushels of corn, wheat, and soybeans are selling for two different prices on the derivatives and cash markets.Now, I'm not an economist, but the first line of the article makes the whole thing sound freakish. From the article: Economists note there should not be two prices for one thing at the same pla ...
Topics: agriculture, business, economy, food (all these topics)

'The Clean Energy Scam' Biofuel boom leveling rainforest, Time reports	Tom Philpott	30 Mar 2008	Gristmill
From an excellent article in Time: Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, Brazil, deforestation, energy, ethanol, rainforests (all these topics)

Farm subsidies: beyond simplistic outrage Gourmet magazine points the way toward a green and smart farm policy	Tom Philpott	28 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, there's a detailed article about the farm-subsidy mess. It can be summarized as follows: 1) the government-engineered ethanol boom has driven up farm-commodity prices; 2) farm incomes are sharply up; yet 3) the government still makes subsidy payments in the billions per year; and thus 4) it's time to cut the subsidies.The logic is impeccable. And surely, payment caps should be much lower and blocked from going to high-income farmers an ...
Topics: ag policy, ag subsidies, agriculture, industrial ag, legislation, politics (all these topics)

A Problem of Scale Chilean salmon-farming industry in a sad state		27 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 4:18 PM on 27 Mar 2008 A virus called infectious salmon anemia is sweeping through Chile's fisheries, bringing attention to the condition of the country's third-largest export industry. On expansive salmon farms, fish are bred in crowded underwater pens. Fish poop and food pellets contaminate the water. As many as 1 million nonnative salmon escape each year, gobbling native species and traveling as far as Argentina. The ...
Topics: agriculture, aquaculture, Chile, fishing, food, news, water pollution (all these topics)

The case for organic builds Recent studies: organic ag is just as productive, and better for you	Tom Philpott	27 Mar 2008	Gristmill
For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds: 1) it produces essentially the same nutritional results as chemical-intensive farming, and 2) it's less productive.Both of those criticisms are crumbling. This month, the Organic Center released a 'state of science' analysis of peer-reviewed studies comparing the nutritional content of organically and conventionally grown veggies. Organic wins by a substantial mar ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, industrial ag, organic food, scientific research (all these topics)

Savor the irony 'Heart-healthy' pork from pigs with bad hearts	Tom Philpott	26 Mar 2008	Gristmill
I live for this sort of stuff: Guys in white lab coats got to tinkering with pig DNA, hoping to conjure up pork rich in 'heart-healthy' omega-3 fatty acids. Here's what they did: A team from the University of Pittsburgh a first transferred the roundworm gene--fat-1--to pig foetal cells. After that, a team from the University of Missouri cloned those cells and transferred them into 14 pig mothers. Great teamwork, guys. Success! 12 pigs were born. Six of them te ...
Topics: agriculture, food, health, insanity, Spain (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: Waste makes haste Canada says no to ethanol waste as cow feed, and more	Tom Philpott	26 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat industry. Back in January, a high USDA official made a pair of statements that say a lot about how we regulate industrial food production here in the United States. On the one hand, he admitted to a journalist that feeding cows high levels of distillers grains -- a the mush leftover from corn ethanol production -- had probably contributed to a spike in cases of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli 0157 b ...
Topics: agriculture, Arkansas, Big Ag, ethanol, food, health, industrial ag (all these topics)

Wary Indiana Plans for Indiana BioTown face obstacles, but sputter on		24 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 4:47 PM on 24 Mar 2008 In 2005, Reynolds, Ind., was deemed the world's first "BioTown," as agricultural officials unveiled a plan to power the 550-person burg entirely with corn, hog waste, sewage, and other energy sources in ready local supply. Three years and many obstacles later, the ambitious proposal is far off track. A significant private investor dropped out; construction on a planned ethanol plant ...
Topics: agriculture, energy, Indiana, news, placemaking, renewable energy (all these topics)

Edible Media: Farmers make the fashion page The NYT hails the era of the hipster farmer	Tom Philpott	24 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web. Photo: iStockphoto Hey, hipster! Wipe that smirk off your face and put that can of PBR down. It's time to get your hands -- and those stiff Carhardts -- dirty. We don't care how many obscure bands you have on your iPod, or how you found that vintage shirt. Can you handle a hoe? (And no, that's not a reference to the gangster rap of your suburban youth.) The in ...
Topics: agriculture, fashion, food, gardening, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Biodiesel in the dumps To survive, producers wanly import feedstock and export fuel	Tom Philpott	21 Mar 2008	Gristmill
At this point, serious greens still promoting biofuels are in a tight corner. Global grain stocks are at all-time lows and prices at all-time highs. That means heavy incentives to clear new land to plant crops -- in precious rainforest regions in South America and Southeast Asia that sustain indigenous peoples and store titanic amounts of carbon. These lands are also concentrated centers of biodiversity. Sacrificing them for car fuel is a heinous crime. Anyone who ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, business, energy, international politics (all these topics)

Kitchen-Table Issues As the feds bail out Wall Street, here's a food-related fix for Main Street	Tom Philpott	21 Mar 2008	Victual Reality
"The current financial crisis in the U.S. is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War." -- Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, Financial Times, March 17, 2008 Breakfast of economic champions? Photo: iStockphoto Drawing on past-life experience as a financial reporter, I have been trying to make sense of ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, economy, food, Victual Reality (all these topics)

GMO, Oh, Mexico ... Mexico to allow planting of genetically modified crops		20 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 11:58 AM on 20 Mar 2008 Mexico has taken the last step toward finalizing rules that will allow genetically modified crops to be planted in the country. That has many farmers in the so-called birthplace of corn worried that GM varieties could contaminate their fields. Under the rules, GM corn wouldn't technically be allowed in certain areas of Mexico considered "centers of origin" for unique corn plant ...
Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, Mexico, news (all these topics)

Hurtling down a bridge to nowhere Another study says cellulosic ethanol ain't happening	Tom Philpott	20 Mar 2008	Gristmill
As the case against corn-based ethanol firms up, we're hearing a drumbeat of claims that corn is only a bridge to a bright cellulosic future. In this vision, ethanol won't be distilled from corn grown on prime land but rather from stuff no one wants: plant 'wastes,' wood pulp, prairie grass, pocket lint. The latest such claim comes from Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Cal-Berkeley. Flush with a $500 million grant fr ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, energy (all these topics)

Grain drain With global wheat stocks at all-time lows, a killer fungus looms	Tom Philpott	19 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Remember awhile back, when a fertilizer magnate raised the specter of global famine? He said: If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine ... We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation. In that context, you hate to read stuff like the following, from the U.N.: A dangerous new fungus with the ability to destroy entire wheat ...
Topics: Iran, food, agriculture (all these topics)

Superweeds on the march In Arkansas, state ag officials turn to Syngenta to solve problems caused by Monsanto	Tom Philpott	14 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In the late 1990s, farmers in the Southeast began planting Roundup Ready cotton -- genetically engineered by Monsanto to withstand heavy doses of Roundup, the seed giant's own blockbuster herbicide. As a result, use of Roundup exploded -- and the farmers enjoyed 'clean' (i.e., weedless) fields of monocropped cotton. But after a point, something funny happened -- certain weeds began to survive the Roundup dousings. These 'superweeds' had somehow gained Roundup resist ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag, toxics (all these topics)

Meat Wagon: How now, mad cow? 'Downergate' reveals gaps in mad-cow testing and trouble in school-lunch sourcing	Tom Philpott	14 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. Remember those 'downer' cows that got forced through the kill line and into the food supply in California's Westland/Hallmark beef-packing plant -- the ones caught on tape by the Humane Society of the United States? Rest assured, friends -- that was an isolated incident. Thus USDA assures us in a recent interview. Only ... not so much. For those who want to believe that downers ...
Topics: agriculture, animal welfare, Big Ag, fashion, food, Food and Drug Administration, industrial ag, TV, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics)

The Fiber of Our Being Legalizing hemp would help environment and economy, says report		13 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 3:36 PM on 13 Mar 2008 The U.S. war on non-smokable hemp hurts the environment and the economy, according to a new report from the free-market-promoting Reason Foundation. To wit: Hemp fiber requires six times less manufacturing energy on average than polyester fiber, and requires less pesticides and water than cotton. Hemp can be used to make paper, fiberglass, and cement, generally with less energ ...
Topics: agriculture, green products, news (all these topics)

GMO: genetically modified organics? Farmers and processors organize against genetic contamination	Tom Philpott	13 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Here in the United States, upwards of 70 percent of corn and 90 percent of soy are genetically modified. Given that corn and soy end up in just about everything -- livestock rations (and thus meat, milk, and eggs), nearly all processed foods, and even our gas tanks, avoiding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is tricky. One way is to shun all processed food and animal products, and simply eat fruit, non-soy veggies, and non-corn grains. (I assume U.S. fruits and v ...
Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, organic food (all these topics)

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