An environmental lawyer for 20 years, including four spent with the USDA, Claire Hope Cummings reports regularly on agriculture and the environment; she has also farmed in California and in Vietnam. She chatted recently with the Ethicurean about her new book, “Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds.”

The salmonella outbreak from fresh tomatoes has sickened hundreds so far — with many more sicknesses presumably going unreported — in 36 states, and the FDA has still not identified the source of the pathogen. Sabin Russell, the San Francisco Chronicle’s medical reporter, yesterday revealed that a major reason is that tomatoes from many regions are mixed together as they move through the stages of commerce. The practice is known as “repacking.”

The type of article lamented by a few commenters on my recent post about food miles vs. food choices made an appearance in Salon a few days ago.
Starting with a provocative headline (”Is local food really miles better?”) and subtitle (”Many of us now count ‘food miles.’ But local fruits and veggies may not be […]

Somewhere along the line, the knowledge base surrounding food dwindled as more home cooks turned to processed and even pre-prepared food. What influenced this loss of basic understanding? How did we become so estranged from the natural environment and the food web that supports us? Ann Vileisis spent a great deal of time researching those questions, and in “Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back” she offers a complicated weave of historical events that persuaded us to adopt “an unspoken covenant between shoppers and an increasingly powerful food industry.”

Two days ago Tom Philpott gave a challenging speech to organic food industry folks at the Organic Summit in Boulder, Co. He has published the text of those remarks as today’s Victual Reality column this week for Grist, and it’s a must-read. Tom has become a good friend of mine so he is going […]

With millions in the tropics rely on the banana as a staple food, the spread of the Panama disease is a serious issue. If it hits a region, like Uganda, that depends on bananas, a humanitarian catastrophe could ensue.

Finding organic and fair-trade bananas in Montreal.

If you want to fight global warming with your diet, it is better to change what you eat than where it comes from, according to a recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Several years ago, Brazil filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) claiming that United States cotton subsidies violated international trade agreements. In 2004, the WTO ruled in Brazil’s favor. More recently, the U.S. lost its appeal, and so now Brazil can propose retaliatory trade sanctions on products from the U.S.

A review I wrote of “Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives,” a new UK food-politics book by architecture professor Carolyn Steel, appeared in the Financial Times’ weekend supplement yesterday.
There’s a lot in the last chapter of the book that bears discussing here, including vertical farms and how historically ideas of utopia have always included […]

The vast disaster in Iowa has inspired an Iowa-based coalition of sustainable-ag folks to partner with Farm Aid to develop the Family Farm Disaster Fund specifically for small and independent farmers, including an Iowa-targeted sub-fund. Willie Nelson is coming to Iowa this weekend to kick off the program, and Farm Aid has also launched an […]

of the Mississippi into most of the city.

Time in New Orleans is now reckoned in relation to Katrina, and the organization that is helping Joe with his garden — New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) — had projects in his neighborhood before Katrina as well as after Katrina.

Iowa is struggling with contaminated drinking water that may contain pathogens, chemicals, and fertilizers. The elimination of water quality monitoring programs by the Bush Administration has made it pretty tricky to know for sure.

With city bans on non-recyclable and non-compostable materials (e.g., polystyrene) and restaurants attempting to be greener, there is quite a discussion about the best packaging for takeout orders.

The European Union is changing the rules for chemicals, requiring that industry demonstrate that a chemical is safe before using it in consumer products. This approach, sometimes called “the precautionary principle,” is in stark contrast to the approach in the United States, where a chemical is considered “innocent until proven carcinogenic.”