Grist | Topics | 21 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 21 of 21
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Dispatches From the Fields: Whatever happened to organic? The limits of consumption-based food movements	Stephanie Paige Ogburn	11 Aug 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. This Olathe Sweet Corn is regionally renowned, entirely local, and grown entirely conventionally and industrially, meaning farmers use large amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. Its locality has become a selli ...
Topics: agriculture, farmers markets, food, industrial ag, local food, organic food (all these topics)

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 ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

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, ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, messaging, organic food (all these topics)

Cuba's urban-ag miracle The U.S. media discover how food production works without access to cheap oil	Tom Philpott	10 Jun 2008	Gristmill
The story is legendary in peak-oil circles: Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union pulled the plug on Cuba's cheap-energy, cheap-food era. (See Bill McKibben's feature piece on the subject here.) No longer would the fading superpower accept the tiny island nation's sugar as payment for crude oil. From then on, only hard currency would do. It also halted food aid. In short order, gas and food prices spiked and people's living standards tumbled. Next, a widespread s ...
Topics: agriculture, Cuba, food, industrial ag, organic food (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)

U. of North Carolina students say no to Smithfield pork Pushing for 'fair food' on campus in the land of hog factories	Tom Philpott	08 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Last year, a bunch of students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got tired of the industrial dreck served up in the cafeteria. They discovered that the landscape around them was producing some amazing, chemical-free meat and produce and set about figuring out how to get some in school dining halls. Photo: iStockphoto Led by seniors Sally Lee and David Hamilton, they declared themselves FLO Food (FLO = fair, local, organic), and began negot ...
Topics: agriculture, campus activism, education, food, industrial ag, local food, North Carolina, organic food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Monsanto U. Public-university researchers get cash for studying GMOs -- and the shaft for studying organic ag	Guest author	20 Feb 2008	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay by Nancy Scola, a Brooklyn-based writer. Her essay, which first appeared on Alternet, is a lucid, detailed look at what has become of public-university agriculture research in an age of budget austerity. ----- I've startled a bug scientist. 'Yeah, now I'm nervous,' said Mike Hoffmann, a Cornell University entomologist and crop specialist who spends his days with cucumber beetles and small wasps. But he's also in charge of keeping the ...
Topics: agriculture, education, food, GMOs, industrial ag, organic food, scientific research (all these topics)

Eco-Farm: Eric Schlosser on Florida pickers and fair wages Fast Food Nation author regales organic-farmer audience	Tom Philpott	25 Jan 2008	Gristmill
Note: For the next few days I'll be reporting from Eco-Farm, the annual conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. At Eco-Farm, some 1,400-1,500 organic farmers, Big Organic marketers, and sundry sustainable-ag enthusiasts pack into a rustic, beautiful seaside conference hall an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco to talk farming amid the dunes.The ever-excellent investigative writer Eric Schlosser kicked off Eco-Farm with a hard-hitting key ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

Can industrial agriculture feed the world? Another study shows organic ag outpacing conventional	Tom Philpott	14 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Apologists for industrial food production often level what they see as a devastating charge against organic agriculture: that it could never "feed the world." The claim goes like this: industrial ag produces higher yields, and as global population grows, we're going to have to squeeze as much food as possible out of the earth, by any means necessary, to produce enough sustenance. Not so long ago Norman Borlaug, that aging lion of industrial ag, growled: ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

Living Piggy Lives On organic pork	Umbra Fisk	15 Aug 2007	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, Commercial pork production is a nasty, polluting operation and inhumane to the animals. What makes organic pork different? Simply what they are fed, or does it involve more humane and less polluting production operations? Related, I have been purchasing free-range, organic chicken for several years now. However, recently the free-range, organic chicken breasts have been humongous, conjuring up images of Dolly Parton chicken ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food, industrial ag, organic food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Forget the Farm Bill For now, local politics is the way to effect ag-policy change	Tom Philpott	02 Aug 2007	Victual Reality
Over the past few years, grassroots support has swelled for new federal farm policies -- ones that promote healthy, sustainably grown food, not the interests of a few agribusiness firms. Udder madness. Photo: iStockphoto The target of much of this organizing has been the 2007 farm bill. If past farm bill debates have been the concern of a small cadre of lobbyists and activists, this one ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Congress, farmers markets, food, industrial ag, Iowa, local food, organic food, politics, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Feeding the world sustainably	Gar Lipow	24 Apr 2007	Gristmill
(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.) If heaven was a pie it would be cherry Cool and sweet and heavy on your tongue And just one bite would satisfy your hunger And there'd always be enough for everyone -- Gretchen Peters, 'If Heaven' Agriculture for food and fiber represents another significant category of environmental impact. Before we worry about how to farm, we should consider how much agriculture we need. If you read the technical news, when this subject ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Food, sustainability, and the environmentalists A food-politics writer expresses angst at the obscurity of his topic	Tom Philpott	21 Mar 2006	Gristmill
The other day, a prominent Canadian journalist paid me a visit to interview me for his book on building a sustainable future. At one point, I expounded on the closed-nutrient cycle of old-school organic farming, contrasting it with what writer Michael Pollan deemed the 'industrial-organic' way. In the old-school organic style, which relies on animals, farm wastes are recycled into the soil, providing all the nutrients necessary for the next harvest. The industrial-org ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

How now, organic cow? USDA inaction supports feedlot-style	Tom Philpott	19 Oct 2005	Gristmill
Consumers looking for milk from grass-fed cows can't rely on the USDA's organic label. As this Chicago Tribune article shows, the department has been allowing feedlot-style mega-dairies to claim organic status -- despite a recommendation from the National Organic Standards Board that it close existing loopholes. Access to pasture lies at the heart of any meaningful definition of organic farm-animal stewardship. Grass-fed cows produce a healthier product, they're eas ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

Spoiling organic milk?	Katharine Wroth	17 Feb 2005	Gristmill
The Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute has just filed a complaint with the USDA against two dairy farms in Idaho and California. It alleges that massive factory farms are labeling their products organic even though their thousands of cows are not pasture-fed, as required by USDA guidelines. Last month the institute -- which is devoted to 'the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community' (and also taking pictures out the car window) -- filed a ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, organic food (all these topics)

Just Spray No On fruit sprays and organic food	Umbra Fisk	26 Nov 2002	Ask Umbra
Dear Umbra, The tangerines I bought recently had this on the label: "Thiabendazole and/or orthopenylphenol and/or imazalil used as fungicides, and coated with food-grade shellac based wax or resin to maintain freshness." Presumably the shellac stays on the skin and does not affect the fruit, but what about the other products? What are these products and do we know what the impact of spraying or putting them on the ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, Ask Umbra, food, food and agriculture, green living, industrial ag, organic food, toxics (all these topics)

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