Tom Philpott has an important post up on Gristmill today, about the final proposal Congress has finally cobbled together for the 2007 Farm Bill, months late. Should Bush veto it or not?

Here in the United States alone, more than 170,000 children aged 12-17 — and that’s the legally hired number, estimates of the real number put it closer to 430,000 — are exempt from federal protective child-labor laws. That means they can work in 100-degree fields for six to seven days a week, 10 hours a day, for far less than minimum wage. They do so to help their families survive.

The husband and I are in Scottsdale, AZ, visiting his family for a few days before the W.K. Kellogg Food and Society Conference starts in nearby Chandler. (See last year’s recap.) The Ethicurean’s Elanor is going too; we’re excited to hang out with our buddies Tom Philpott and Sam Fromartz, among the many food-movement people […]

I’m involved in starting a brand-new CSA that I am really excited about: helping Liz and Dan from Clark Summit in Tomales, CA, get theirs off the ground. Clark Summit should be the poster farm of the sustainable-agriculture movement. They do things right — 100% grassfed beef, including Scottish highland, piglets and chickens running free all over the farm.

Two health and nutrition awards for the Ethicurean.

Going on a stroll with a friend leads to a two-hour-long skillshare that reverses the usual generational roles: Fuddy-duddy me tries to explain RSS feeds, the point of Facebook (not sure there is one), and things like Digg to the 26-year-old. In turn, she shares knowledge gleaned from botany classes and, she confessed, years of reading seed catalogs at bedtime, about the edible things I’ve been walking past every day.

The breakout indie documentary “King Corn” is being broadcast tonight and for the rest of the week on PBS’s Independent Lens series. Even if you’ve memorized “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and think you know all there is to know about how corn has made us its slave, you’ll still be amused and informed by the film.

Eating ethically is not for the lazy.

Just finished a major upgrade of the WordPress system that this blog runs on; sorry for the disarray for the last few hours. I have also installed a bunch of new plug-ins in response to reader requests:

You can now e-mail posts to friends, as well as tag them yourself for Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace, etc. […]

We’re very pleased to announce that guest contributor Ali Benjamin has accepted our invitation to don an Ethicurean apron. Ali’s a busy bee on the Internets, writing her own blog, The Cleaner Plate Club, as well as contributing to Eat. Drink. Better. She’s a freelance writer and mom in Vermont; for more, check out her […]

There will be no set of Digests for Thursday morning as hoped because I just accidentally deleted it. If I can face reconstructing it, maybe Saturday.
And yes this is the real time.

As the Ethicurean has grown, we have started to get some really off-the-wall e-mails from PR people. I can no longer resist publishing the most head-scratching of them, with the identifying information compassionately removed.

Food & Water Watch did a funny little April Fool stunt for YouTube, involving some high-end "Potomac Springs" bottled water, as part of their Take Back the Tap campaign.

Tomorrow night (Monday, March 31) I’m moderating a discussion about making environmentally conscious food choices, sponsored by CUESA. It’s a pretty great panel — all women, incidentally:

Helene York, Director of Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation and Project Director of the company’s Low Carbon Diet program
Gail Feenstra, Food Systems Analyst at the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research […]

There hasn’t been nearly enough fun around here lately. Our last attempt at making you smile — despite Farm Bill delays, Monsanto victories, the co-option of the EPA, and tragic transgenic pigs — caused quite a brawl in the comments section. (22 and counting!)
So, it’s Friday. Start the weekend off right with this beguiling little […]