NewsTrust - Farming - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Obama Nominates Pesticide Executive to Be Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Amy Goodman - Nov. 17 (Interview) - President Obama’s nominee for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative, Islam Siddiqui is currently a vice president at CropLife America, a coalition of the major industrial players in the pesticide industry, including Syngenta, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical.

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Jonathan Safran Foer's Controversial New Book, Eating Animals

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Aaron Gross - Oct. 26 (Review) - Over the next weeks Huffington Post will feature a diverse range of responses to Jonathan Safran Foer's controversial new work of non-fiction, Eating Animals.

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Big Ag’s odd obsession with You-Know-Who

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Laskawy - Oct. 09 (Opinion) - Big Ag has clearly decided that Pollan is a latter-day Lenin (or perhaps Trotsky?) leading a cadre of food revolutionaries who threaten to overthrow its hard-fought hegemony—rebut his arguments and perhaps the whole movement will collapse like a bad soufflé. All in reaction to a relatively unassuming guy who’s written some articles and a few books. Isn’t this all, like, a bit much?

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FEMA should conduct preparedness drill in the Green River Valley

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Dave Reichert, Adam Smith - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - The Federal Emergency Management Agency should augment local efforts to respond to the risks associated with the storm damage to the Green River Valley and Howard Hanson Dam, write U.S. Reps. Dave Reichert and Adam Smith.

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Dow Agrosciences: farm like there’s no tomorrow!

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Philpott - Jul. 28 (Review) - “If you’re going to farm a piece of land, you ought to farm it for all its worth.” —Tim Hassinger, commercial vice president at Dow AgroSciences, quoted in an AP story called “Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture.”

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The Patriot's Guide to Legalization

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Maybe the war against pot is about to get a lot uglier. After all, in the 1920s, Prohibition gave us Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and that was over plain old whiskey and rum. Are we about to start paying the same price for marijuana?

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Update to the update on “Hey, Limbaugh” 5/8/2009

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

agweb.com - By Steve Cornett - May. 08 (Opinion) - In an earlier update, we wondered why Rush Limbaugh is stonewalling on his support for the Humane Society of the United States. One response accuses this reporter of not listening to Mr. Limbaugh, offering the challenge, “Listen, and then we can talk about where he stands on the issues.” Of course I listen to Limbaugh, as does just about everybody I know. I listen and mostly I agree. His support of the animal rights agenda has lowered him in my opinion, and by a lot. No, wait. It’s not his support for the movement. It’s his failure to own up and explain why he thinks that way.

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Why there are pathogens such as MRSA in our pork

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Mar. 25 (Opinion) - Five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana tested positive for MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — according to a peer-reviewed study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology last year. Regardless of whether the bacteria came from the pigs or from humans who handled the meat, the results should sound an alarm bell, for MRSA already kills more than 18,000 Americans annually, more than AIDS does.

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Where Policy Grows

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jane Black - Mar. 24 (Advocacy) - Iowan Dave Murphy Is Challenging the Corporate Farming Of America

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The Trouble With Subsidies

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - I'm certainly not going to defend those AIG bonuses. But the trouble with populist outrage is that it bubbles over, sweeping from one justifiable issue across to many others. Waves of populism are now working their way through the American government on several fronts. The area I'm most worried about is trade, where populism leads to protectionism. The scandal of the moment, the bailout bonuses, will pass; in a year or two (one hopes) the U.S. government will no longer own banks and insurance companies. But protectionism and trade wars, once started, are hard to reverse.

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Corn as a Health Issue

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By George F. Will - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - Tom Vilsack, Iowa's former governor, calls his "the most important department in government," noting that the Agriculture Department serves education through school nutrition programs and serves diplomacy by trying to wean Afghanistan from a poppy-based (meaning heroin-based) economy. But Vilsack's department matters most because of the health costs of the American diet. If Michael Pollan is right, the problem is rooted in politics and, in a sense, Iowa. Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," says that after World War II, the government had a huge surplus of ammonium nitrate, an ingredient of explosives -- and fertilizer. Furthermore, pesticides could be made from ingredients of poison gases. Since 1945, the food supply has increased faster than America's population -- faster even than Americans can increase their feasting.

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No Lunch Left Behind

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Alice Waters, Katrina Heron - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - THIS new era of government bailouts and widespread concern over wasteful spending offers an opportunity to take a hard look at the National School Lunch Program. Launched in 1946 as a public safety net, it has turned out to be a poor investment. It should be redesigned to make our children healthier.

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Harvesting Emissions

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Living On Earth - By Sara Scherr - Jan. 23 (Interview) - Through crop and livestock production and land clearing, the world's agricultural sector is a bigger contributor to global warming than the transportation sector. Economist Sara Scherr, CEO of Ecoagriculture Parters, says it’s time to start looking at farmers as environmental stewards, not just food producers. She speaks with Steve Curwood about techniques that help farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change.

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Soil Not Oil: Why We Need to Kick Petroleum Out of Our Farms

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Vandana Shiva - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - The following is an excerpt from Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva (South End Press, 2008). The industrialized, globalized food system is based on oil. It is under threat because of the inevitability of "peak oil." It is also under threat because it is more vulnerable than traditional agriculture to climate change, to which it has contributed. Industrial agriculture is based on monocultures. Monocultures are highly vulnerable to changes in climate, and to diseases and pests.

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U.S. has its own melamine problem

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By James E. Mcwilliams - Nov. 27 (Opinion) - For all the outrage about China, what U.S. consumers and government agencies studiously fail to scrutinize is how much melamine pervades our own system. In casting stones, we've forgotten our own house has more than its share of exposed glass.

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The Corn Isn't Green

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Robert Bryce - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The ethanol producers and the flex-fuel-car advocates are wrong because their solution replaces only part of the crude-oil barrel and won't reduce demand for that entire barrel in any meaningful way. Here's why.

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We are heading for a global environmental credit crunch

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Straight.com - By Charlotte Argue - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Although this credit crunch may pose a legitimate threat to many livelihoods and pensions, there is another crunch we have much greater reason to fear. We are in the midst of a credit crunch that threatens not only the economy of every country, but also the fate of thousands, if not millions of species, including our own. Our actions, largely driven by the capitalist market, are depleting Earth's resource bank at unprecedented rates, causing a shrinking supply of Earth's resource capital: a global environmental credit crunch.

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Livestock Antibiotics: It is our diet

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Jun. 11 (Editorial) - As the Seattle P-I's Andrew Schneider reported, routine use of antibiotics in livestock feed could be fueling resistant bugs. The Pew Commission of Industrial Farm Animal Production recently recommended banning antibiotics' use to promote animal growth rather than to treat infections. Doctors limit kids' antibiotics. Though agribusiness would squeal, farm animals need controls, too.

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The Rich Get Hungrier

Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Amartya Sen - May. 28 (Opinion) - WILL the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up -- or grow worse over time? The answer may be both. The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it.

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The farm bill ups the cellulosic ethanol ante

Sat, 24 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Philpott - May. 24 (Opinion) - The new law also contains some goodies for investors who want to build cellulosic ethanol plants. It provides mandatory funding for a program that went unfunded in the 2002 farm bill for "grants to demonstration-scale plants up to 30% of costs, and loan guarantees for commercial-scale plants (up to $250 million per plant)." No estimate is given on how much this will cost taxpayers.

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Farm Bill: Buying votes

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - May. 13 (Editorial) - The best hope is for a small House margin that would encourage and support President Bush in sticking to his veto threats. Then, a year or two extension of the existing farm bill would allow a new president and Congress to start over from a fresh point of view. By focusing on food consumption, the next Congress could create a bill for the public, farmers and the environment, not wealthy interests and voting blocs.

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Monsanto's Harvest of Fear

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By James Steele, Amy Goodman - May. 06 (Interview) - Monsanto already dominates America's food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation's tactics--ruthless legal battles against small farmers--is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

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World food balance tips toward crisis

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Paul Krugman - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels. The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a "scam." This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly "good" biofuel policies, like Brazil's use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation. And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: People are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

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Stuffed and Starved

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Raj Patel, Amy Goodman - Apr. 08 (Interview) - Global food prices have risen dramatically, adding a new level of danger to the crisis of world hunger. In Africa, food riots have swept across the continent, with recent protests in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent--in Sierra Leone, 300 percent. In the United States there has been a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months.

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King corn takes a hit

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - The price of a bushel of corn hit a record $5.79 on March 11, even after a year in which American farmers planted 92 million acres with maize -- the most since World War II.

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