Grist | Topics | 160 Results

RESULTS		Results 101 – 125 of 160
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Swine By Us Court rules against green groups, lets factory farms off the hook		19 Jul 2007	Daily Grist
Swine By Us Court rules against green groups, lets factory farms off the hook Some 2,600 livestock companies are participating in a sweet deal from the U.S. EPA. In exchange for paying a minimal fee and agreeing to participate in an air-quality data-collection program, factory farms can basically be exempt from Clean Air Act requirements for 30 months. When the swap was announced ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Big Ag, industrial ag, litigation, news, US EPA (all these topics)

Gulf Dead Zone: Bigger than ever Thanks in part to that 'green' fuel, corn-based ethanol	Tom Philpott	17 Jul 2007	Gristmill
U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn this spring, a 15 percent-plus jump from last year. If you lumped all that land together -- not too hard to imagine, given that corn ag is highly concentrated in the Midwest -- you'd have a monocropped land mass nearly equal in size to the state of California. The jump in corn acreage is excellent news if you own shares in mega meat-processing firms like Tyson and Smithfield. These firms have been complaining bitter ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, ethanol, industrial ag, oceans, water pollution (all these topics)

Think They'll A-Peel? Latin American banana farmers sue U.S. companies over pesticides		11 Jul 2007	Daily Grist
Think They'll A-Peel? Latin American banana farmers sue U.S. companies over pesticides A pesticide designed to eradicate worms from Latin American banana trees may have had a detrimental effect on workers' ... oh, how to put it ... bananas. At least 5,000 agricultural laborers from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama have filed five lawsuits in the U.S., claiming that exposure to th ...
Topics: agriculture, health, industrial ag, litigation, news (all these topics)

Mind your (fo)odometer	Kate Sheppard	03 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Check out a new video on food miles from The Nation: You can also check out the accompanying article here.
Topics: agriculture, climate, food, green living, industrial ag, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Edible Media: Gene blues Why we may one day bitterly regret GM crops	Tom Philpott	03 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web. I spent the weekend in Atlanta at the first-ever U.S. Social Forum -- an extremely interesting event, but not the place to go for someone needing to catch up on rest. Now I'm laid up with a sore throat, which gave me a chance to do today something I never get to do anymore -- curl up with the print version of the Sunday New York Times. I especially like to dig into the b ...
Topics: agriculture, food, GMOs, industrial ag (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Family Feud Why agribusiness giants are facing off over corn ethanol	Tom Philpott	24 May 2007	Victual Reality
As recently as 2005, a buck fifty could get you a bushel of corn -- about three days' rations for a confined dairy cow. Today, that same bushel would run you nearly $4. Trouble in Big Ag paradise. Photo: iStockphoto That rapid price increase, inspired by a slew of federal policies that encourage transforming corn into ethanol, is rippling through the global food system, jacking up food prices and squ ...
Topics: biofuels, industrial ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Buyer Be Wary On the peculiar American habit of demonizing food	Tom Philpott	10 May 2007	Victual Reality
Not long ago, a reader wrote in with an interesting response to one of my many articles condemning industrially grown corn. Yes, you can buy it! Photo: iStockphoto "When sweet corn appears at the farmers' market next summer, can I buy it in good conscience?" she wanted to know. "Or is it bad for me and bad for the land?" I can see why she might be confused. Even as U.S. farmers pre ...
Topics: advice, agriculture, food, industrial ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

One Bad Scrapple Spoils the Bunch Regulators reveal new information on China-U.S. food links		09 May 2007	Daily Grist
One Bad Scrapple Spoils the Bunch Regulators reveal new information on China-U.S. food links The tangled food relationship between China and the U.S. keeps getting tangledier. As new details emerge in the wake of the March wave of pet deaths, concerns about the possibility of tainted food reaching U.S. dinner tables are growing. U.S. regulators said yesterday that cyanuric acid, a chemical used as a ...
Topics: agriculture, China, industrial ag, news, United States (all these topics)

Monsanto tastes defeat Twice in one week!	Tom Philpott	08 May 2007	Gristmill
Monsanto has barreled its way toward dominance over the global seed market with strong-arm tactics and friends in high places. As evidence of the former, the roguish company once threatened to sue me -- then a neophyte blogger with 30 readers -- on the most trivial grounds possible. As for the latter, software monopolist Bill Gates, evidently impressed with the way Monsanto tosses around its market girth, has tapped a former Monsanto exec to help lead his foundation' ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Department of Agriculture, food, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics)

Food Chain Radio: great edible audio	Erik Hoffner	02 May 2007	Gristmill
I'd like to recommend Food Chain Radio to all you people who like to eat. This podcast/broadcast is freely available and fascinating, delving into the implications of our appetites: everything from factory farming and CAFOs to irradiation and poisoned pet food. The most interesting recent show available at the link above is called Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, which discusses a time of rationing when oddities like knuckle of pork and stuffed beef heart became culinary trea ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, food, industrial ag, politics (all these topics)

Challenging Monsanto in Munich A guest blog from farmer's rights legend Hope Shand	Tom Philpott	28 Apr 2007	Gristmill
In the global fight to preserve what's left of agricultural biodiversity from the ravages of the multinational chemical/seed giants and their government lackeys, no civil-society organization stands taller than the ETC Group. Among other projects, ETC documents the growing dominance over the global seed market by a handful of firms: Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dupont. The following guest post, by ETC research director Hope Shand, details Monsanto's quest to enforce it ...
Topics: Big Ag, biodiversity, food, GMOs, industrial ag (all these topics)

Unrigging the game How to stop the agribiz giants from impeding the growth of local food.	Tom Philpott	26 Apr 2007	Gristmill
In today's Victual Reality I discussed how a few companies dominate U.S. food production, and how their market girth weighs heavily on efforts to rebuild local-oriented, environmentally and socially responsible food networks. Now I'd like to add a few words on what might be done to remedy the situation. First of all, it's important to note that heavily consolidated food markets rig the game to favor large-scale, industrial-style farming. As companies like Cargill a ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, business, food, industrial ag, local food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

From Concentrate How food processing got into the hands of a few giant companies	Tom Philpott	26 Apr 2007	Victual Reality
Two years ago, dairy giant Dean Foods shuttered a milk-processing facility in Wilkesboro, a town at the eastern edge of North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains. Photo: iStockphoto Dean processes 35 percent of the fluid milk in the U.S. and Canada -- roughly equal to the combined market share of its three biggest rivals combined. In my area of western North Carolina, it processes 100 percen ...
Topics: food and agriculture, industrial ag, North Carolina, 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)

The Route of the Problem Following U.S. consumerism through the fields of China and Brazil	Tom Philpott	12 Apr 2007	Victual Reality
In what surely counts as one of the greatest feats in the history of global trade, the United States has essentially outsourced its manufacturing base to China in little more than a decade. It all starts with shuttered factories. Photo: iStockphoto But in doing so, the U.S. has helped unleash new trends in global agriculture that threaten global climate stability and biodiversit ...
Topics: ag policy, agriculture, Brazil, China, industrial ag, United States, Victual Reality, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

BBC on 'feeding the world' The perils of cooking with greenhouse gas.	Tom Philpott	29 Mar 2007	Gristmill
The BBC has issued a pretty clear-eyed report on food production and climate change, the podcast of which you can download here. The report makes no brief for sustainable ag, but it does cogently question industrial ag's ability to 'feed the world' as climate change saps water tables and population continues to grow.
Topics: agriculture, climate, food, industrial ag, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Ag giant's Amazon plans go terminal Why bother filing an EIS for a biodiversity-destroying project?	Erik Hoffner	27 Mar 2007	Gristmill
Ag giant Cargill was forced to close a soy export terminal in the Brazilian Amazon this weekend, marking a major victory for greens, who have argued for years that the plant was built illegally and became a significant cause of rainforest depletion. The terminal spurred a major leap in soy production -- millions of acres of rainforest were turned over to soy bean fields -- which is used principally to supply European livestock farms. Ironically, it was closed not bec ...
Topics: business, industrial ag, rainforests (all these topics)

Dishing It Out My address to the Southern Appalachian Youth on Food conference	Tom Philpott	08 Mar 2007	Victual Reality
One crop to rule them all. Photo: USDA Tucked into the rolling hills of North Carolina's Swannanoa Valley, Warren Wilson College is essentially surrounded by a farm. The school's 800 students not only tend the 275-acre farm -- which includes pastured livestock and vegetables -- they also provide the labor to run the campus. They do everything from accounting to plumbing to cooking in the ca ...
Topics: food and agriculture, industrial ag, sustainable ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

Recipe for a Revolution How a cookbook renaissance heated up the sustainable-food movement	Tom Philpott	15 Feb 2007	Victual Reality
In the postmodern United States, a cultural critic laments, "The pleasures of the table are rarely appreciated at face value." ��Speak truth to flour. A near-hysterical concern with health has replaced common sense, he continues, leading to all manner of dubious decisions: "Americans blithely drink sodas filled with artificial flavors and sweeteners, yet paste ...
Topics: agriculture, food, industrial ag, recipes, slow food, Victual Reality (all these topics)

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