The high-starch vegetables play an important role in our winter diets, giving us the extra nutrition and energy we northerners need to stay warm and well-fed when the snow flies. But you’d better believe that we’re counting down the days until the start of this year’s farmers market -– and the first fresh leafy greens and other spring vegetables!

Bills to support raw-milk production and to protect farmers from GMO patent-holders are on their way to the California legislature.

The Farm Bill is back. (Admit it — you’d been missing it.) House and Senate ag staffers have taken to lurking in each other’s offices and furrowing their brows over what could be a protracted conflict between members of the conference committee, that group of reps and senators assigned to turn the meat grinder on […]

I’m still crippled — reduced to mousing and typing with left hand while standing with an ice pack strapped to my back (yeah, I know how sexy I look — you should see me in my cervical collar!). Sorry, but that means no Digest, and believe me, those 7,142-and-counting unread headlines are hurting me just […]

PETA’s smartest PR move ever may be hiring Free Range Studios, the geniuses behind The Meatrix, to co-produce their latest campaign, "The Road to the Greenhouse."
The go-vegetarian message is a lot more palatable when served up as a mock debate featuring the presidential candidates of both parties reimagined as vegetables  — among them Broccoli […]

According to Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Campaign for Safe Food and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture released new rules this morning that essentially reverse the ban that was passed late last year on rBGH-free labels for milk. According to the campaign, "Dairy processors [in PA] are again free to use such […]

This is a special edition of the Digest devoted to reactions to the Food and Drug Administration’s determination that clones and their milk are safe for consumption.
Rick Weiss reports on the USDA’s request for a "voluntary moratorium" on selling clones to allow consumers to adjust to the idea (i.e., let them forget about this week’s […]

At a meeting of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association on January 5, 2008, Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner had much to say about the current state of corn and renewable fuels. After extolling our nation’s glorious efforts in making ethanol from corn, Conner commented:

Our growing appetite for renewable fuels and the standards […]

Montreal enjoyed several days of warm weather last week, which melted almost all of the snow that had fallen over the last two weeks, and there was a lot of it. Just as I was beginning to enjoy walking to work in my hiking boots, mother nature dropped another big snowfall on us and I […]

Agency scientists decided to use the same simple but effective standard used by farmers since the dawn of agriculture: If a farm animal appears in all respects to be healthy, then presume that food from that animal is safe to eat

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about food — particularly local food — and weather, as the last week or so has given us Kansans temperatures in the teens and in the 60s, sunshine, rain, ice and snow.
Local is the big word in food trends these days, and for good reason. Our food system has […]

Only a few miles outside the town of Mount Vernon, in Washington State’s Skagit Valley, the Diaz-Elliott family recently embarked on a bold experiment in local food sourcing. In hopes of reducing their carbon footprint by minimizing the distance that food must travel to reach their dinner table, this independent-minded clan has sworn to go no farther than their own refrigerator for the ingredients of their next year’s worth of meals…. But he takes a philosophical view: “The way I figure it,” he says, “if God had meant humans to eat wheat and other cereals, He would have given us teeth that are suited to grinding, like horses have…. Not all the Diaz-Elliotts’ neighbors are impressed with the family’s crusade; some suggest that their “locavoreanism” may be going too far…. In a notable example of this green-ward drift, the Ford Motor Company announced on Monday that it will offer, as optional equipment on its 2009 Excursion and Expedition SUVs, a small built-in refrigerator, to enable environmentally conscious owners to adhere to locavore principles no matter how far from home they wander.

Well, the meat’s from 2007, but why quibble when we have this exciting new graphic to guide your decision whether or not to eat a burger of questionable provenance?
Details: Rochester Meat of Minnesota is recalling approximately 188,000 pounds of ground beef products because — drumroll! —  they may be contaminated with E. coli […]

Michael Pollan came to Canada — almost.
The promotional tour for his new book "In Defense of Food" landed him an interview on CBC Radio’s The Current (listen to the interview here) this past Wednesday, January 9th. He wasn’t actually in Canada — he broadcast his bit from the CBC studios in New York while […]

On Wednesday, January 16, at 12 p.m., the California state legislature is holding a hearing to consider reversing — or at least amending — AB 1735, the sneaky Oct. 8 change to California’s Food and Agricultural Code that would basically shut down the production of raw-milk in the state. It is absolutely critical that everyone who cares about real food show up.