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Food and Ag News Nuggets

Yes, but can you feed the world? That question is often big agriculture’s first argument against organic and sustainable agriculture.

(And the inverse—that we need chemicals and large-scale farming to feed the world—is often a talking point in support of production ag in general and in specific, genetically engineered crops.)

So what is the answer?  Thanks to a recent study by the United Nations Special Rapporteu, the web has been abuzz with the question. Here’s a quick roundup of those discussions.

Also in this week’s roundup: Is the USDA anti-antibiotic? Agriculture zoning across the U.S. and more. 

Food and Ag News Nuggets

In the new food documentary, Fresh, one of the more compelling stories is that of Russ Kremer, a Missouri hog farmer.

Kremer was your typical industrial hog producer, confining his animals and shooting them full of thousands and thousands of dollars of antibiotics each year. But, when one of his boars stuck him with a tusk in the knee, he developed a life-threatening drug resistant infection and that was enough to change his mind about how he raised his pigs. He survived, and when he returned to his operation, he decimated his herd and started over, this time trading antibiotics for a more sustainable, holistic approach to managing the health of his animals.

Also in this week’s roundup: iny cows could make big difference and more on the ag PR wars. 

Food and Ag Roundup

The New York Times had two must-read pieces on agriculture since we last rounded up food and ag stories.

First is this piece on how after all that talk about the graying American farmer over the last decade, the trend seems to be reversing.

Also in this week’s roundup: Getting Piggy with the other white meat, report showcases how consolidation in the seed industry is damaging American agriculture and farm subsidy reform is looking more and more like a possibility every day on Capitol Hill.

New West Column

For farmers, there are really only two seasons: work season and worry season.

Work season starts in late February, when there are tiny seedlings to sow. Soon, there are fields to plow, irrigation systems to set up and tractors to fix. Then, the baby turkeys arrive and from there, it’s a whirlwind of transplanting, weeding, harvesting, selling and chasing fowl off of rooftops until the end of November.

There’s too much doing to really think about much during work season. And, if something is chewing at you, all you have to do is find some time to dive into whatever is nagging at you and voila, the problem is solved.

Food and Ag News Nuggets

The agriculture economy in America is running strong, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told Congress this week. But a few lawmakers were quick to tell him that that’s no thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Also in this week’s roundup: Besides the EPA, the laundry list of perceived threats against production agriculture mounts, big food fights on the pages of The Atlantic worth reading and scrap the veganism, try becoming an insectarian.

Food and Ag Roundup

When the Obama Administration released its budget on Monday, it was met with both cheers and jeers in the food and agriculture community. This week’s roundup gives a quick look at some of the reaction.

Also: Time says foodies are the new environmentalists, how American cities are leading on food-friendly policy and why the executive director of Slow Food USA says Obama is a dud when it comes to food system reform.

Food and Ag Roundup

This week’s food and ag roundup catches you up on the USDA’s decision to deregulate genetically-modified sugar beets, the latest on a measure in the Montana Legislature that would even the field for farmers accused of planting patented plants (like GMO sugar beets), raw milk pops up in statehouses across the country and a few other news nuggets.

Read on. 

Food and Ag Roundup

The food movement has come a long way, even just in the last five years. Food and how it’s grown, cared for and processed has gone from a niche topic to a full-blown revolution. And while the core of the movement continues to be all the people working day-to-day on these issues on the ground: farmers, cooks, eaters and community organizers (Want some great examples? Check out the series from our pages this week), there is a small, but powerful group of people emerging who have put food back on the national stage.

This week’s food and ag news was rife with stories about and by, as Culinate.com put it, the “power hungry.”

Food and Ag News Nugget

The United States Department of Agriculture decided Thursday to completely deregulate the planting and use of genetically-engineered alfalfa.

A court challenge had halted planting of the crop, which for now is marketed by ag giant Monsanto as Roundup Ready alfalfa, because the agency did not do an environmental impact statement on it. The agency did an EIS last year and came up with several options, including full deregulation or deregulation with modest restrictions. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and his department selected the former, setting off cheers from the biotech community and a wave of disappointment (to put it lightly) in sustainable ag circles.

Food and Ag Roundup

If you believe two big PR pushes in the news this week, two companies that have played major roles in breaking agriculture and our food system are leading the charge to reform it.

First came the announcement from Wal-Mart on its pledge to make healthy food affordable by reducing prices on produce, bringing more Wal-Mart stores to so-called “food deserts” and reducing sodium and sugar in its store brands while leveraging its buying power to encourage other food producers to follow suit.

Also in this week’s food and ag roundup: Fake blueberries, non-meat taco meat and Colin the chicken is white people food?

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