By Karen Perry Stillerman Sometimes gratitude feels like a stretch, and this fall has been one of those times. We’re in the home stretch of a difficult year. Bad news abounds, and even the holiday that many of us will celebrate this week is complicated — a day of thanks that also evokes loss and […]
By Helena Norberg-Hodge If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have given us agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, regenerative agriculture and other methods […]
By Rebecca Mackelprang A University of California, Berkeley professor stands at the front of the room, delivering her invited talk about the potential of genetic engineering. Her audience, full of organic farming advocates, listens uneasily. She notices a man get up from his seat and move toward the front of the room. Confused, the speaker […]
More than a third of Americans eat fast food on any given day. That’s the key finding of a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) that tracked the fast food consumption of Americans between 2013 and 2016. “On any given day in the […]
By Edward Davey The world is vastly underestimating the benefits of acting on climate change. Recent research from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate finds that bold climate action could deliver at least $26 trillion in economic benefits through 2030. This ground-breaking research, produced by the Global Commission and more than 200 experts, […]
By Reynard Loki Whole Foods bills itself as “America’s healthiest grocery store,” but what it’s doing to the environment is anything but healthy. According to a new report, the chain is helping to drive one of the nation’s worst human-made environmental disasters: the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. By not requiring environmental safeguards […]
By Courtney Lindwall A megamerger between two of the world’s biggest agricultural corporations looms on the horizon. The seed and pesticide giant Monsanto is inching closer to uniting with the German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer—a consolidation that could spell disaster for farmers, pollinators, and affordable, healthy food. Here’s why the Monsanto-Bayer merger is a […]
Kraft Heinz announced Tuesday it was voluntarily recalling around 7,000 cases of Taco Bell Salsa Con Queso Mild Cheese Dip over concerns they could become infected with the bacteria that causes botulism. The company said the dip in the affected cases had begun to separate, which could create conditions that allow the bacterium Clostridium botulinum […]
By Scott Faber It’s not hard to see the differences between the terrible, partisan House farm bill and the bipartisan Senate farm bill. Here are eight ways the Senate version—which passed in the Senate last week—is better than the House bill: 1. Thanks to Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Senate bill finally denies farm subsidies to […]