agriculture

“Jesus was preaching to people who were in the middle of the worst farming and fishing crisis yet.”

Is an organized state the pinnacle of progress? James Scott doesn’t think so.

Ted Genoways overturns assumptions not only about industrial agriculture but also about the farmers who are part of it.

There is too much carbon in the atmosphere. What if one of the most compelling responses is to restore the carbon in the ground beneath our feet?

It used to always be energy policy that divided environmentalists: is nuclear power a problem or a solution? Is natural gas just as bad as petroleum, or a useful transitional better-than?

Now that food policy has gone from being the subject everyone ignores to the subject everyone has opinions on, the thing ruining friendships is GMOs.

When Rachel Marie Stone offers homilies of food redemption rather than damnation, it may feel like a lovely if disorienting kind of grace.

A recent report from PLOS One finds that growth in global agricultural yield is not projected to keep up with growth in demand. Brad Plumer picked it up, and someone gave his post this blog-snappy headline: "This terrifying chart shows we're not growing enough food to feed the world."

Well, not exactly.

It’s farm bill season again. That’s right: time for our divided government to get together and reauthorize the five-year omnibus bill that affects everyone who grows, sells or eats food—or at least to go through the motions for a while before punting again like last year.

On a crisp winter morning, I took a walk in the sparkling snow covering our small farm. Soon four beehives beckoned.

Critics of the food movement's emphasis on organic, smaller-scale and local/regional agriculture tend to point out that feeding the world requires large-scale, conventional farming. But we're already producing more food than we need. The problem is drastic inequalities of access.

A new report from Oxfam (pdf) highlights one particularly egregious force behind these inequalities: foreign speculators buying up farmland in poor countries.

If agriculture survives at all on the Great Plains, it will be very limited. What will take its place? Not many people, that's for sure.

U.S. farm policy badly needs an overhaul. But first, amid the worst drought in decades, Congress needs to pass an uninspiring farm bill.

Joel Salatin's new book offers a full banquet of opinions, prescriptions and rants. How does the man find time to farm?

The developed world's negligence has produced one of Africa's cruelest ironies: its farmers are its hungriest people.

I'm as down on big organics as the next guy who makes homemade sauerkraut out of cabbage grown by his farmer wife. As Stephanie Strom details, the standards of organic certification could be much stronger, and most national organic brands are owned by the very mainstream companies they're standing in implicit objection to. Not exactly a recipe for systemwide reform.

Still, I think Tom Philpott's right: Michael Potter of the independent holdout Eden's Organics, Strom's primary focus, goes too far in slamming the certified-organic label as a "fraud."

The post office called recently about a box of honeybees. The assault of insecticides means my sister can no longer overwinter her hives.

Eliminating food deserts isn’t enough. The nation’s diet problem calls for sustained community attention--and better federal policy.

Driving through a mini-snowstorm, I thought I might see a snowbow. But it never materialized--and once again, none of the snow stuck.