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Category Archives: Food
The Most Deceptive Graph Ever Made?
A Famous Graph of the Triumph of Science Actually Shows Just What is Wrong with Our Agriculture It’s the most reproduced chart in anything ever written on agriculture. It shows a triumph of science: the meteoric rise in US corn … Continue reading
Good Luck with the Corn, RFK You A-hole
The point is that hundreds of businesses, laws, political allegiances, rural landscapes, and even the American palate have been shaped by this history for a century now. Our national integration of agriculture is the country’s biggest and most dysfunctional case of path dependence. Bummer that HFCS makes us fat and diabetic, but it’s part of a system that long ago metastasized throughout our economy. Poor RFK, that’s what he’s up against: its deep history. Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Food, Industrial Agriculture, Public Health
Tagged agriculture, farming, food, sustainability, sustainable-agriculture
2 Comments
Bonus Eventus and Childless Cat Ladies
Interested in how the government spends your taxes? Well in the case of the US, I’m flattered to say the federal government has been spending it on me. But it does it in two very different ways. First, it pays … Continue reading
Posted in Food
2 Comments
Golden Rice: Bringing a Superfood Down to Earth
May 2016: The article “Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines,” by Dominic Glover and me, has been published in the journal Agriculture & Human Values and is available here. This blog post is … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, Food, Philippines
40 Comments
GM Foods: A Moment of Honesty
As the latest controversy over GMO’s unfolds – this time it’s about a House Bill that would ban labeling laws – it’s time for a moment of honesty about science and safety. Of course safety is hardly the only bone … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biotechnology, Food, Public Health, Regulation
Tagged agriculture, biotechnology, endocrine disruptors, environmental toxicology
57 Comments
A century later, we find out…
These two items appeared in separate sections of the NY Times yesterday: There was an obituary for Elizabeth Whelan, who started the American Council on Science and Health back in 1978. This was an industry-supported initiative claiming to represent “Science, … Continue reading
Posted in Biotechnology, Food, Public Health, Regulation
6 Comments
The Right to Farm Right
I’ve got an idea: why don’t we Missourians follow up on passing our ALEC-supported ag-gag law with a full-blown amendment to the state constitution to shield industrial agriculture? That way, even if someone risks being officially listed as a terrorist … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Food, Industrial Agriculture, Regulation
Tagged agriculture, corruption, factory farming, small farms, virginia
7 Comments
Theme Park Farming in Japan
[A different version of this post appeared as the inaugural “Notes From The Field” on the website for Culture and Agriculture.] Those of us interested in farming talk about “indigenous knowledge” a lot, but several years ago Paul Richards suggested … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Food, Industrial Agriculture, Japan
Tagged agriculture, farming projects
3 Comments
Dutch Treat
We now know the “best and worst places in the world to eat,” courtesy of Oxfam. The best is the Netherlands; the worst is Chad. (Here is an explanation of their analysis, and here is where you can explore their country-specific … Continue reading
Overpopulation and the Small Farmers of Oakwood
Speaking of overpopulation: I found Oakwood chapel. I was in England in May and I spent a day tracking down this little chapel that played such a fateful role in Western ideas on population and food. Oakwood (or Okewood) it … Continue reading
Posted in Food, Population
Tagged agriculture, malthus, malthusian, overpopulation, population
6 Comments
fieldquestions 