Growers in heart of India’s tea industry sip a weakening brew, and say climate change to blame AP GAUHATI, India (AP) — In this humid, lush region where an important part of the world’s breakfast is born, the evidence of climate change is — literally — a weak tea. Growers in tropical Assam state, India’s… Read more »
A Visit From Maine’s Organic Gardening Guru
The Atlantic By Chloe Rossetti Yale’s Timothy Dwight common room is packed. The room quiets down, and a couple hundred Ivy affiliates surrender their ears … to a farmer. The man, the farmer, the legend, is Eliot Coleman, educator, advocate of Four Seasons Farming (a year-round farming philosophy of his own creation), and author of… Read more »
Meyer Natural Foods Acquires Dakota Beef
USAgNet Meyer Natural Foods, Lexington, Ky., and Loveland, Colo., announced it is acquiring Howard, S.D.-based Dakota Beef, one of the largest and oldest certified organic beef brands in North America. As part of the transaction, terms of which were not disclosed, Meyer Natural Foods has secured a long-term supply of organic Angus calves born on… Read more »
More Farmers’ Markets Expand to Year-Round
AP PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — A steady stream of customers filled baskets and shopping bags with vegetables, cranberries, cheese, fresh-baked breads and pies while chatting with the dozen or so farmers selling goods in the visitor’s center of a local museum. It was a bitterly cold, gray December day, but for many, it felt just… Read more »
WikiLeaks Cables Reveal U.S. Sought to Retaliate Against Europe over Monsanto GM Crops
Democracy Now JUAN GONZALEZ: U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal the Bush administration drew up ways to retaliate against Europe for refusing to use genetically modified seeds. In 2007, then-US ambassador to France Craig Stapleton was concerned about France’s decision to ban cultivation of genetically modified corn produced by biotech giant Monsanto. He also… Read more »
A Look Inside the ‘Raw’ Milk Underground
Nicole Bode visits an unpasteurized milk club. DNAinfo By Nicole Bode MANHATTAN — It didn’t look like a batch of groceries that could get someone in trouble. I inspected the cardboard box full of two half-gallons of milk, two cartons of eggs and a white plastic bag with some chicken livers inside. All of the… Read more »
Poverty puts Chester into a food desert
Philadelphia Inquirer By Alfred Lubrano One in an occasional series. Eyeing a potato at Frederick Douglass Christian School in Chester one day in the fall, a first grader called it a “tomato.” Another said he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen one before. “How do you spell ‘nasty?’ ” asked Ja’Niyah Van, 6, tasting a baked… Read more »
Salinas, California: The Salad Bowl of Pesticides
Politics Daily Sheila Kaplan SALINAS VALLEY, Calif. – Locals call this place the world’s salad bowl. Dole, Naturipe and Fresh Express are here, where much of the global fruit and vegetable trade emerges in neat green fields just over the hills from the Pacific Coast. The difficulties facing migrant workers who plant and pick the… Read more »
Congress Sends Food Safety Bill to President’s Desk
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition On December 21, 2010, the House of Representatives voted 215-144 to pass the Senate version of the Food Safety Modernization Act, with the Tester-Hagan amendment protecting small farms intact. This final vote by the House ends weeks of procedural wrangling, and sends the bill to the President’s desk for enactment. As… Read more »
Unsafe Eggs Linked to U.S. Failure to Act
Washington Post By Lyndsey Layton Public health officials closed the books this month on an outbreak of salmonella illness that had sickened more than 1,900 people since May and led to the largest recall of eggs in U.S. history. Two Iowa egg farms drew most of the blame, triggering a congressional investigation, a federal criminal… Read more »
