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Nuking Gene Patents?
The Myriad case – with its embedded nuclear bomb that would abolish most gene patents in the US – has been languishing on the Supreme Court’s desk ever since last year. The Supremes hadn’t accepted the...
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New Ag Antibiotic Rules: Toothless and Oblivious
Headline in the NY Times: U.S. Tightens Rules on Antibiotics Use for Livestock. The lede: Farmers and ranchers will for the first time need a prescription from a veterinarian before using antibiotics...
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My First Charitable Donation to a For-Profit Business
I just made a charitable donation to a for-profit business. A cheese-maker, to be exact. This is not something one does every day, and not something I thought I ever would do. This calls for some...
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Two Agricultural Donations
Since I do research on small farms for a living, I don’t normally find it a cause for celebration to be wrong about small farms. But I am toasting Caromont Farm’s kickstarter success and my complete...
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Wilk on Diet Change and Nutritainment
Today’s guest blog is from Rick Wilk, a leading scholar of food, consumption, agriculture, and various other topics. His recent books on food include Home Cooking in the Global Village and Rice and...
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More to the Story — Top 5 GMO Myths
When you hear about “Myths About GMO’s” you can usually expect a polemic from an activist. It may be an anti-GMO activist debunking myths like “GMO’s can help feed the world” or a pro-GMO activist...
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The Animal Lover’s Dilemma
Today’s guest blog by Elizabeth Vandeventer of Davis Creek Farm, Nelson County, Virginia. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Univ. of North Carolina....
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Obesogens
Multiple choice question: What does the “Obesity Epidemic” have to do with agriculture? What epidemic? Obesity is an age old problem, and this “epidemic” is an invention of the press and the diet...
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This is Your Brain on GMO’s
Last week British anti-GMO activist Mark Lynas took to the podium at a conference to apologize (or apologise) for having spent years “ripping up GMO’s.” Now he has decided that Genetically Modified...
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Bt Cotton is Failing; Blame the Farmers
Of all the GMO controversies around the world, the saga of Bt cotton in India continues to be one of the most interesting and important. In the latest chapter, reported by the Business Standard, cotton...
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The Myriad Case on Gene Patents: 3 Things to Know
15 Apr 2013: The Myriad case on “human gene patents” was argued at the Supreme Court this morning and it’s a big day for Intellectual Property. Here are 3 things you should know: 1. It’s not really...
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Overpopulation? Don’t Bet On It.
If you are concerned with overpopulation, you may have noticed that The Bet is back in the news. The Bet involved Paul Ehrlich who, for those of you too young to remember, was the Stanford biologist...
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Overpopulation and the Small Farmers of Oakwood
Speaking of overpopulation: I found Oakwood chapel. I was in England in May and I spent a day tracking down this little chapel that played such a fateful role in Western ideas on population and food....
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GM Grass Goes Yard
The grass seed company Scotts Miracle-Gro announced at its shareholder meeting this past week that they would be having employees testing genetically modified grass seed in their yards. Is that legal?...
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Dutch Treat
We now know the “best and worst places in the world to eat,” courtesy of Oxfam. The best is the Netherlands; the worst is Chad. (Here is an explanation of their analysis, and here is where you can...
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Theme Park Farming in Japan
[A different version of this post appeared as the inaugural "Notes From The Field" on the website for Culture and Agriculture.] Those of us interested in farming talk about “indigenous knowledge” a...
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The Right to Farm Right
I’ve got an idea: why don’t we Missourians follow up on passing our ALEC-supported ag-gag law with a full-blown amendment to the state constitution to shield industrial agriculture? That way, even if...
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A century later, we find out…
These two items appeared in separate sections of the NY Times yesterday: There was an obituary for Elizabeth Whelan, who started the American Council on Science and Health back in 1978. This was an...
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Do Farmers Want GM Crops?
Do small farmers in developing countries want GM crops? That is a truly divisive question, and it seems like anyone with a dog in the hunt gets to speak for the farmers. I want to consider what’s...
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Three stories on the factory farm
Three items crossed my desk this week concerning the factory farm scene, i.e. CAFO’s or Confined Animal Feeding Operations. Two were scientific studies with troubling implications for our health, and...
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