Why I’m a Chick with Chicks

Why I’m a Chick with Chicks

In the span of a few years, I’ve gone from weird to trendy. Why? I keep chickens — in San Diego. Here’s one sign of how times have changed. In 2009, the local newspaper’s editorial page excoriated me for trying to change local laws to allow chickens....
These Laws Make Me Want to Gag

These Laws Make Me Want to Gag

Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from? Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows? Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the...
Another Side of the Immigration Debate

Another Side of the Immigration Debate

Until a few years ago, Rosa Acosta had never even seen a flush toilet. She raised her 12 children in a tiny adobe home in rural Jalisco, Mexico. Several of her kids left it to work in the United States. One son, who left at age 12 to earn money as a farmworker in...
High Time for Hemp

High Time for Hemp

Four years ago, Michelle Obama picked up a shovel to make a powerful symbolic statement about America’s food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden. I’m guessing that now, as she begins another four years in...
The Risky Business of Eating in America

The Risky Business of Eating in America

Long before human beings decoded the human genome or split the atom, they discovered that arsenic is very good at killing things. The ancient Romans prized it as a murder weapon because it could be mixed into food or drink without altering its color, taste, or smell....