The New York Times By ALLISON WINTER of Greenwire SIOUX CITY, Iowa — In the midst of sprawling corn and soybean fields, industrial animal-processing plants and ethanol refineries, Woodbury County is charting an unusual course. It’s trying to go whole-hog into organic agriculture. “This is a totally new direction for us,” said Debi Durham, president… Read more »
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Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food
Time Magazine By Bryan Walsh Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste… Read more »
Inexpensive Technology Can Spot Fake Organic Milk – Will the USDA Look?
Cornucopia’s Take: Spectroscopy offers hope for truly organic dairy farmers. It provides a fast and inexpensive way to show, scientifically, whether milk comes from cows pastured on grass. Cornucopia has, in the past, filed numerous complaints against “organic” livestock operations who are in our judgement flouting the organic pasture rules. This is based on flyover images… Read more »
Health Advantages of Organic Beef
We’ve all been there. Faced with the range of beef choices available on the retail shelf, the simple act of deciding what’s for dinner turns into a rumination on the short- and long-term impact of our food choices. Add the steady chorus of marketing messaging embedded in your brain courtesy of Big Meat, and the… Read more »
Organic Faces Growing Pains as Demand Outpaces Supply
The Des Moines Register by Christopher Doering Source: thebittenword.com When Andrew and Melissa Dunham took over a 150-year-old corn, soybean and cattle farm from a relative in 2006, the 80-acre spread northeast of Des Moines couldn’t support a full-time farmer. So the young couple decided to overhaul the operation by embracing what was then a… Read more »
A Better Way for California to Water Its Farms
Wired by Danielle Venton Source: Texas A & M AgriLife Research California’s Central Valley farmers have a problem. Agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of the state’s water consumption, and in the midst of a historic drought, it is the largest potential source of water savings. Farmers want to be good stewards of the land by… Read more »
Only Agroecology Can Tackle the Global Food and Health Crisis
Ecologist by Dr. Julia Wright Source: WESSA The recently published Global Nutrition Report shows almost all countries face high levels of malnutrition and diet-based ill-health, writes Julia Wright. This reveals deep problems with the dominant industrial model of food production, and the need for new agroecological approaches to feeding the world. The current global food crisis… Read more »
Invader Batters Rural America, Shrugging Off Herbicides
New York Times By Michael Wines WHEATFIELD, Ind. — The Terminator — that relentless, seemingly indestructible villain of the 1980s action movie — is back. And he is living amid the soybeans at Harper Brothers Farms. About 100 miles northwest of Indianapolis, amid 8,000 lush acres farmed by Dave Harper, his brother Mike and their… Read more »
Robo-Calls Bother Organic Farmers During Spring Planting:
Latest Push for Check-off by Powerful Organic Lobby Group The Organic Trade Association (OTA) has launched the next phase of its push for an organic check-off program. The industry lobby group, funded by the likes of General Mills, WhiteWave, Organic Valley and Smucker’s, has been working the phone lines, robo-calling thousands of organic farmers across… Read more »
Scientists Frustrated by Factory Farms: Scientific Evidence of their Non-Sustainability Mounts
Pulse by Jim Lundstrom A factory dairy near Phoenix, AZ Professor Robert Lawrence is in a select company of researchers. “I think the only other group of scientists who probably are more frustrated than we are are the climate scientists,” Lawrence said in a recent telephone call. Lawrence is director of the Johns Hopkins Center… Read more »
