Archive for March, 2009
Eat, drink, think: San Franciscans, come play Edible Pursuit this Sunday!
As anyone who's opened up a magazine or a newspaper recently knows, the print publishing industry is in deep trouble. (When the New Yorker has not a single ad between the inside cover and the Table of Contents, that's kind of like walking into Chez Panisse at 7 on a Friday night and finding it half empty.) Edible
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Digest – News: Flesh-eating bacteria, wallet-eating food companies, and eating, righteously
Makes your skin crawl: As previously reported here, a flesh-eating, antibiotic resistant bacteria is killing 18,000 Americans a year and is carried by 45% of farmers and 49% of pigs in Iowa. Nicholas
After Michelle Obama: a Q&A with Scott Schenkelberg of Miriam’s Kitchen
Mrs. Obama on the line at Miriam's Kitchen; photo courtesy of Choice Photography. Last week, Michelle Obama made news by serving a meal at Miriam’s Kitchen, a DC social service agency. Miriam’s
Not milk: The ingredient behind the dairy crisis
I have no idea what it would feel like to be a dairy farmer. I don't run a business that was started by my father or mother or grandparents, or that I built myself; I don't own and manage land that has been in my family for generations. Come to think of it, I've never really had to make a major business
Review: Real Food For Healthy Kids cookbook
I talk a lot of smack about sustainable food. About the unexpected pleasures of farmer’s markets, about voting with one’s fork, about "local economies" this and "food miles" that. But here’s my dirty little secret: it wasn’t that long ago that I fed my daughter a steady diet of chicken nuggets,
Digest – News: Salmon synergy, Whole Foods less whole, rotation’s right
Slammed by synergism: Researchers expose juvenile coho salmon to combinations of commonly-used agricultral pesticides. For two-thirds of the pesticide combinations, they find that the effect of the combination is greater than the sum of the impacts of the individual pesticides (i.e. the combo has synergistic
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Digest – Features and blogs: No flies on me, tomato realities, Osterholm revolves
The 'fix' is in: Sources say that the Obama Administration will nominate Michael Osterholm to head the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service on Monday, in clear violation of its own anti-revolving-door policy. Osterholm is a longtime supporter of food irradiation, but that's not all - if you have any
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Rooted in discomfort: Dispatch from the MOSES organic farming conference
Lately I’ve realized that in the midst of distracting sights and sounds, I forget to notice the smells around me. So last weekend at the Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin, I made an effort to pay
Digest – News: Label libel, Chiquita goes bananas, and another reason to stay off soda
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Digest – Features and blogs: Why go local?
Agriculture next to fall? In his latest blog screed, famed dystopian James Howard Kunstler predicts that agriculture will be the next to fall in the world economic crisis, noting that "if the US government is going to try to make remedial policy for anything, it better start with agriculture, to promote
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Parallel universes: A rice farmer’s point of view on U.S.-European GMO attitudes
By Greg Massa I’m a California rice farmer, but recently in Germany I was a rock star. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Oddly, my celebrity status came from a speech I gave to European farmers about genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Serving meals, shedding anger, at a free lunch program in New England
Toward the end of last year, something happened. I still can’t say what, exactly, I just know it happened almost overnight. For two years, I’d been reading and blogging almost exclusively about food. I’d devoured articles about CAFOs and corn, downer cows and diabetes, subsidies and school lunches.
Winter, Shminter: Not Everything Sleeps when the Ground Freezes
I usually take a giant chill pill the months of January and February (ok, and maybe March too). I have never lived in a place without blizzards and tear-inducing wind chills. While that might be sad to folks who prefer equatorial breezes, I’ve generally enjoyed the cold times of the year as a season
Down (and out) on the farm: When even the good years don’t look so good
In late 2006, I was driving by corn fields in eastern Iowa when Tom Ashbrook's NPR show "On Point" came on the radio. The topic was ethanol. Among the commentators was an ag economist from Iowa State -- which seems to produce ag economists at a rate close to that at which Iowa produces corn -- who
Digest – News: Seeds grow, even in prison; allergy nuts; and the return of the pear
Growing hope: U.S. prisons are notoriously bad at rehabilitating inmates and preparing them to return to public life, but San Quentin is trying to change that. How? By providing an organic garden that residents can care for. "It reminds me of being with my grandmother," says one inmate. "It saved my
