The rest of the story on food, farming and biotechnology
This week a presidential executive order declared the herbicide glyphosate “crucial to the national security and defense” because it allows “farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low production costs while ensuring that healthy, affordable food options remain within Continue reading
To hikers in Shenandoah National Park, Corbin Hollow is a procession of forested hillsides, copperheads, and collapsed chimneys. But the hollow is filled with ghosts. In collaboration with documentary filmmaker Richard Robinson, I have just published an article in Southern Continue reading
A Famous Graph of the Triumph of Science Actually Shows Just What is Wrong with Our Agriculture It’s the most reproduced chart in anything ever written on agriculture. It shows a triumph of science: the meteoric rise in US corn Continue reading
The point is that hundreds of businesses, laws, political allegiances, rural landscapes, and even the American palate have been shaped by this history for a century now. Our national integration of agriculture is the country's biggest and most dysfunctional case of path dependence. Bummer that HFCS makes us fat and diabetic, but it's part of a system that long ago metastasized throughout our…
Interested in how the government spends your taxes? Well in the case of the US, I m flattered to say the federal government has been spending it on me. But it does it in two very different ways. First, it pays Continue reading
As stories about GM crops in developing countries unfold, I continue to be struck by how very different each case is. Despite the desire for simple global narratives of success or failure, the crops differ, the transgenic traits differ, the Continue reading
Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a GMO. What s GMO? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! Continue reading
May 2016: The article Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines, by Dominic Glover and me, has been published in the journal Agriculture Human Values and is available here. This blog post is Continue reading
What a bloodbath on Wall St XOM down 5%, UNH down 5%, DIS down 4%. But the biggest loser this week was DDT. DDT featured prominently in the recent blog highlighting the ongoing studies by Berkeley s Barbara Cohn. Despite Continue reading
As the latest controversy over GMO s unfolds – this time it’s about a House Bill that would ban labeling laws – it’s time for a moment of honesty about science and safety. Of course safety is hardly the only bone Continue reading