Food and Farming
Wall Street Sodbusters
I love the names: Bobcat Farm, Golden Eagle Ranch, Long Prairie, Ten Mile Farm. They conjure up Americana, the old homestead, and our rich rural culture. Less bucolic, however, is the fact that all those farms are part of a massive Wall Street investment scheme called...
A War on Regulations
The incoming Republican government is waging a war against regulations. "For every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated," Donald Trump promised after the November vote. Since then, Republicans in Congress have voted to give themselves broader...
Gold-plated Tractors for Gentlemen Farmers
Let's talk tractors — the sturdy workhorses of agriculture. I've been around them since I was just a tyke — there's even a Kodak snapshot of three-year-old me sitting proudly at the wheel of the Farmall tractor my Uncle Ernest used for years to work his small family...
Even Organic Farms Sacrifice Sustainability to Cut Costs
I visited a family farm recently. It was small, and local, and certified organic. In theory, it was everything an eco-conscious foodie could want. And yet, it wasn't. Like every farm family, the couple who runs the farm is constrained by economic factors....
My Food Identity Dilemma
Why do we eat what we eat? Many of us eat foods that are familiar, convenient, and that simply taste good, without thinking much about why we make the choices we do. For others — myself included — there's a constant struggle to determine what's healthy, both for...
Dining Out? Here’s Some Food for Thought
Americans now spend more on dining out than on groceries. But while we increasingly seek out organic and fair trade goods at the store, we usually don’t think about the social and environmental impacts of dining out. We should. The last time you ate at a restaurant,...
Better Labels, Better Food
Food labels are changing. In the past, you could only see how much total sugar was in your food. That included sugars naturally occurring in healthy, whole foods — like lactose in milk — alongside extra sugars like sucrose or high fructose corn syrup, which aren't so...
Putting Free Speech Out to Pasture
Hard experience teaches that biotech companies, chemical corporations, and other agribusiness giants have no sense of respect for Mother Nature. Now, Rick Friday has learned they have no sense of humor either. Friday, a lifelong Iowa farmer, also happens to be a...
Say It, Don’t Spray It
A friend of mine is a farmer out in Montana. She's also eight months pregnant with her first child. Recently she looked out her window and saw a worker spraying pesticides on her neighbor's farm. Concerned for the health of her baby, she called the neighbor about the...
The Good Food Movement Needs Science, Too
Perhaps you've heard some organic food advocates say, "We should just roll back the clock and farm the way we used to" — before modern science gave us factory farms and genetically modified ingredients. Others disagree, saying that we'd all starve if we didn't use...
