The industrial agriculture complex has been doing back flips for the last few weeks, first because of the ascendance of Blanche Lincoln (ConservaDem-AR) to the high throne of the Senate Agriculture Committee, where she promises to pinch climate legislation
(or at the very least shove it aside until next year) and push a
southern Big Ag agenda in the Senate for rice and cotton in
The Global Harvest Initiative, founded by agribusiness interests DuPont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and John Deere, will meet today
beginning at 9:00 am for a daylong symposium at which the focus is said
to be on finding “ways to sustainably double agricultural output to
meet rapidly growing global demand as anticipated by the United
Nations.” Are big corporations finally seeking to do what is right by
the nearly billion p
For the past dozen years, I've been writing editorials opposing the
introduction of genetically modified crops. When I began, genetically
modified corn and soybeans were still just getting a foothold in
American fields. Now, of course, hundreds of millions of acres here and
abroad have been planted to these new varieties, which are usually
engineered to withstand the application of pesticides - pesticides
usually made by the same companies that engineer the seeds. Even wheat
and rice producers, latecomers to the genetically modified table, are
feeling the pressure to convert.
Our most potent political weapon is food.
If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally,
we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food
system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial
system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat,
as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become
captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on
cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food, along with
energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age.
GENEVA - A group of 125 non-governmental organisations from 50 countries is calling on the governments participating in the mini-ministerial trade talks in India over the next two days to reject the further liberalisation of food and rather promote policies that will achieve food security and rural development and safeguard farmers' livelihoods.
The reef, which stretches for 1,200 miles off the northeast coast of Australia, has "poor" prospects of survival as a result of over-development and a failure by the relevant authorities to protect it from illegal fishing and chemical run-off, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said its first report on the state of the reef's health.
The report warned that damage to mangroves, increasing algae on coral reefs, ocean acidification and coral bleaching were already evident.
Okay, only fair to warn you. I do not answer the question here. Second, the subject is not really one for a blog, more for a book. But it's important to say short things as well as long. Third, I have a bias. We all do. In this case, it matters that I like Michael Pollan's writing and that I believe there is much wrong with conventional agriculture as practiced in the United States. You will see why that is relevant in just a moment. Now back to the question.
This one really matters.
President Obama’s plans to reform the healthcare system in U.S. have taken over the headlines in the past several weeks. Doctors, economists, insurance executives, public health experts—all of them are being afforded the chance add their two cents on how to fix our broken healthcare system. The voices that are strikingly absent, though, are those of the agricultural community. What, you may ask, does agriculture have to do with overhauling the healthcare system?
Yesterday Secretary Clinton was in Kenya with a delegation that included Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, as well as Representatives Donald M. Payne (D-NJ) and Nita M. Lowey (D-NY). While the group was there on a broad platform to discuss economic development in Africa, including food security issues, the delegation took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to visit the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) lab, which is best known for unsuccessfully trying to produce a genetically modified, virus-resistant sweet potato under a US-led program.
