Tugging on an ear of (American) corn

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
–John Muir, U.S. environmentalist, preservationist, author, & founder of the Sierra Club
Environmental News Network (ENN) has a great article about what happens when you tug on an ear of American corn. A scientist with the Smithsonian [...]

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Safe seeds for 2007

I received my first 2007 gardening catalog yesterday–Select Seeds of Connecticut. I wrote about them in March, so I don’t want to get too detailed about them again except to say that they sell antique and heirloom varieties and it’s a really beautiful catalog. While thumbing through it, this small notice on the inside [...]

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Ease up on produce farmers

In today’s New York Times. Nina Planck writes a good article about the E.coli outbreak due to eating raw spinach from California. She makes some excellent points, worth discussing here.

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Michael Pollan on organic food at Wal-Mart

If any of you have ever read anything by Michael Pollan, you’ll appreciate his recent article in the New York Times on the organic food that’s now available at Wal-Mart. Michael is nothing if not fair–in his inimitable style, he discusses the good, the bad, & the ugly.

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Organic food at Wal-Mart

At the Gristmill blog, there's a good article and ongoing discussion about the difference between organic and sustainable agriculture. The genesis of the article is Wal-Mart's pending expansion of its organic food section, which is bound to change the face of organic agriculture (and not for the better.)

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The state of the American small farmer

Tom Philpott at the Gristmill blog wrote a few days ago about the implications of the 2007 Farm Bill for small-scale farmers. He discusses two reports recently released by the USDA's Economic Research Service. I haven't read either of the reports yet, but Economic Well-Being of Farm Households and Growing Farm Size and the Distribution [...]

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US sued for growing GM crops in wildlife refuge

Reuters reported last week that the Delaware Audubon Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Center for Food Safety have banded together and sued the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and its parent department, the U.S. Department of the Interior, for illegally growing genetically modified crops in a national wildlife refuge located in [...]

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Farm subsidies clarification

An email exchange between a fellow blogger leads me to print a clarification of a previous post about farm subsidies. Last year, the U.S. government handed out $23 billion in farm subsidies. The most unbelievable part is that 72% of these subsidies went to 10% of the recipients.

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Farmers, biotechnology, & the new face of agriculture

Balou at Gebloggte Welten recently blogged about Seeds of Change: Farmers, Biotechnology, and the New Face of Agriculture. Produced by two researchers at the University of Manitoba, the "publicly-funded, farmer-focused research video" was blocked from release by the U of M for three years.

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A uniform disaster: National Uniformity of Food Act

Today I want to write about a bill that has gotten very little press coverage except in a few farm-heavy states: the National Uniformity of Food Act, which was passed in the House last week and will be taken up by the Senate in the near future.

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Sustainable blogging

Another WordPress.com blog, gebloggte Welten, has published some excellent research on anti-GMO/anti-globalism activist Jose Bove’s recent denial of entry into the US. Now, all you English-only speakers (that includes me!), don’t be discouraged from reading this post because it’s in German.

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Bigger is not better

Research by a biochemist at UT-Austin shows that the nutritious value of fruits & vegetables has decreased over the last few decades. Based on data from the US Dep’t of Agriculture, the study looked at the levels of 13 nutrients in fruits and vegetables and found that the values of 6 of them (protein, calcium, [...]

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Faith in a seed: buying organic

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there and I am prepared to expect wonders.” — Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of faith [...]

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Jose Bove: Vive la revolution

A couple of weeks ago, a French farmer named Jose Bove was denied entrance into the US even though he had a valid US entry visa. Bove was held at JFK without explanation and later deported to France.
Neither the Immigration Department or the Dep’t of Homeland Security have explained why Bove was denied entrance. But [...]

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