Food and Farming
The Ethanol Industry’s $6 Billion Christmas Gift
Who needs $6 billion? I do! Especially during the holiday season when I try to balance my budget and ever-growing Santa wish lists. I can also tell you who doesn’t need $6 billion this year: big oil and gas conglomerates. They just got a little extra via the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). If you can believe it–this tax credit–one of the best examples of wasteful spending out there–was attached to the tax cut deal President Obama negotiated with Republicans.
School Lunch Victory
Thanks to the tireless efforts of thousands of people who are working hard to get America’s schools to serve healthier food, including First Lady Michelle Obama, the $4.5 billion “Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act 2010” prevailed in the lame-duck session of Congress. The new law marks a key step toward potentially transforming the food served in America’s public schools.
Meet Your New Neighborhood Food Market
Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with two million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a “local” mask.
We Can’t Afford Cheap Meat Anymore
Most Americans view cheap meat as a good thing, but they generally don’t understand who pays the high cost of the policies making it inexpensive. More than 80 percent of the beef, pork and poultry consumed in this country comes from livestock fed and processed by only three meatpacking companies: JBS-Swift, Cargill and Tyson. Through deregulation and antitrust practices, these companies have been allowed to devour smaller companies that both feed and process meat
Food Shouldn’t be a Poker Chip
This Thanksgiving, most farmers around my hometown in central Minnesota are celebrating a good harvest. Rain–for once–fell at the right time in the right amounts, and prices for many crops grown in Litchfield are high.
Food Pyramid Scheme
Sweet Tomato Victory
Some of America’s worst-paid and least-protected workers have scored agreements with two of the nation’s largest tomato growers after a 15 year labor dispute. They even got a long-overdue apology.
“In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible,” explained Jon Esformes, operating partner of Pacific Tomato Growers, the first to ink a deal with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “The transgressions that took place are totally unacceptable today and they were totally unacceptable yesterday.”
Is Free Speech just for Corporations?
The big brand-name corporations love advertising. They love it so much that they spend some $170 billion a year in our country to put all sorts of slicken and hokum on their products, and on their own public image.
The Lineup: Week of October 18-24, 2010
Here’s what you’ll find in the latest OtherWords editorial package.
Big Chocolate’s Child Slavery Addiction
Sorry to scare you, but on Halloween much of the chocolate Americans will hand out to trick-or-treaters will be tainted by the labor of enslaved children.
