In the Depths of the Oceans, Mining, Overfishing Takes a Toll
Once seen as too remote to harm, the deep sea is facing new pressures from mining, pollution, overfishing and more.
Month: June 2017
Soil Salinity Threatens California Farms
The water that made the San Joaquin Valley an agricultural powerhouse also spelled its doom. Because most water contains salt, irrigating adds salt to soil over time.
Merging Agromodernism with Skepticism: A Manure Detection Kit
What happens when you combine the principles of ecomodernism with the tools of scientific skepticism? Agromodernism: A pragmatic path to sustainable food production.
The Protein Gap: Nutritional Science’s Biggest Error
Despite the fact that the protein gap theory has been thoroughly debunked, the focus on protein deficiency still persists in many minds.
Six Ways to Improve Meal Times With Your Children
Meal times with young children can be stressful, especially after a day at work or a day caring for them. And if they refuse to eat the nutritious dinner you’ve cooked, this can easily lead to frustration.
Here are six things you could do to make meal times a bit less stressful.
Wage Theft and Class War
. . . Now, let’s imagine that a waitress decides that it’s not worth haggling with her supervisor everyday over the $10 a day the restaurant owes her to fill the gap between her $2.13 wage, her tips and the $7.25 an hour she is supposed to be making. But then she makes the wrong, but perhaps understandable decision to start skimming the $10 a day by pocketing the check for a table or two each day that pays in cash that she avoids ringing in.
Food as a Political Weapon
If Bittman, et.al., truly believe that “farming should happen in harmony with the environment,” then why are they fighting genetic engineering, which offers tools for growing food in a more environmentally sustainable manner, with fewer pesticides, less nitrogen fertilizer, less tilling, less water and higher yields?
Tricks Are for Kids
To get a first hand feel for this creepy phenomenon, I hoofed it over to my local Fred Meyer to browse the cereal aisle, a place I’ve only stopped in once before to grab some store brand bran flakes for homemade muesli. There they were, relegated to the bottom shelves. And here’s the creepy thing. They were looking up at me, trying to make eye contact from the place on the floor.
Agvocates: It’s Your Turn to Stop the Mud Slinging
Lets’ start this by saying I deplore the use of fear-based imagery in marketing and education. That’s represented in the aforementioned post. But I have also recently called out ‘agvocate’ voices for using hyperbole or bad reasoning in their arguments. When we take sides first and ask questions later, we risk falling on sloppy arguments ourselves. Painting any issue as black or white is a dangerous proposition.
Let’s Stop Burying the Lede in the Organic vs Conventional Debate
Debunking too often tends to be a team sport and just because it’s inevitable, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. In food and farm issues, only biotech drives more debunking than the Organic vs Conventional debate. When you are responding to misinformation the “other” side has already defined the terms of the debate and it’s hard to bust out of those frames. Often that means the big picture gets lost.
WAPO Reporting on Organic Dairy Underscores a Core Problem with Organic
Recent reporting on organic dairy production in the Washington Post underscores a preoccupation with the aesthetic appeal of organics and little interest in the environmental impacts.
Monsanto Gas Mask Man: Activist imagery and its meaning to farmers
Terence Bradshaw, Director of the UVM Horticulture Research and Education Center tries to bring some sanity and context to the use of protective gear when applying pesticides in both organic and conventional systems.
Stand Up for Family Farmers – Pass the Farmer Fair Practices Rules
The Farmer Fair Practice Rules consist of one interim final rule and two proposed rules. The interim final rule deals with competitive injury disputes for contract growers. Currently, contract poultry growers must prove harm for the entire $48 billion chicken industry rather than harm to themselves when seeking relief from poultry companies for abusive contract practices. This outrageous interpretation of the Packers and Stockyards Act not only places undue burden on individual growers – it also allows the meatpacking industries to continue abusive practices largely free of consequences. The interim final rule eliminates that burden, thereby taking some power from the multinational meatpackers and placing it with the individual farmers.
Trump’s Rash Departure From Paris Agreement Leaves Farmers Worse Off
National Farmer’s Union president Roger Johnson on why Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement will be bad for farmers.
Nutrient Management on Steroids
NutrientStar, which assesses fertilizer management products and tools using field trials and in-depth scientific reviews, was a game changer for farmers. Prior to the launch of the program last year, there was no expert review program to help farmers determine what tools would work as advertised.
The only downside of the program was its limited utility. Farmers had no easy way to extrapolate results from the relatively few number of field trials performed thus far to their own locations. Now, a new geospatial feature called the Technology Extrapolation Domain (TED) framework will make NutrientStar accessible to tens of thousands of additional farmers across the Corn Belt.
I like to think of it as NutrientStar on steroids.
Just Say No to “GMO”
Kevin Folta explains why it’s important to use the scientifically accurate term “genetically engineered” to refer to biotech crops and animals rather than the sloppy and baggage laden “GMO”.
The Resistance of Peruvian Coffee
In Peru, as yellow rust disease has devastated top quality coffee harvests, coca for cocaine is filling for farmers who need to bolster sagging incomes.
We Need Your Data on Conservation Ag Practices
The Environmental Defense Funds genuinely believes that conservation practices are good for farmers and landowners’ bottom lines. But faith isn’t a strong selling point. They need help putting together the data and the evidence. This is a call to farmers to share their data on conservation practices and how they affect the bottom line.
The Dutch Weed Burger . . . Seaweed, that is.
Five years ago, Kulsom and his colleague Lisette Kreischer founded a company called The Dutch Weed Burger after they shot a documentary about the role of seaweed as a future source of protein. Kulsom says the company’s mission is “to work on the acceptance of seaweed becoming a part of the new paradigm.”
Enter their first product: the weed burger.
At first, a seaweed burger seems like an unusual choice, but it begins to make sense after a while.