| Apr 24, 2013 | Food / FarmingMy heart aches for the people of West, Texas, the tiny town where a fertilizer plant recently blew up. Many of the folks who perished in the blast were heroic volunteer firefighters who ran into danger instead of away from it. With 14 dead and 200 injured, and a...
| Apr 17, 2013 | Food / FarmingMy new neighbor knocked on my door and introduced herself as the vice president of the local homeowner’s association. “How friendly!” I thought. “She’s welcoming me to the neighborhood.” Then she wrinkled her nose and motioned...
| Apr 10, 2013 | Food / FarmingAs this spring began, another branch in the biotech giant Monsanto’s sweep around any meaningful regulation of its products burst into bloom. Monsanto and its fellow “Big Six” pesticide and biotech companies — Syngenta, Dupont, Bayer, BASF, and Dow...
| Mar 27, 2013 | Food / FarmingWhen my father immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the mid-1980s, his first job was washing dishes at a Furr’s Fresh Buffet restaurant in New Mexico. It paid the state-mandated minimum wage of $2.90 per hour. My father sent a portion of his scant...
| | Food / FarmingGlobal pork titan Smithfield has ranked second among food production companies on Fortune magazine’s 2013 list of “Most Admired Companies.” Before untangling how terribly strange and ironic this is, I’d like to address just what “most...
| | Food / FarmingIn 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....
