Growers and Grocers

France’s biggest farmers’ union, the FNSEA, convenes this week in Metz. Jean-Michel LeMétayer, the organization’s president, opened the conference with a focus on possible new markets as he faced an audience of farmers worried about bird flu and the subsequent sale crisis, according to this story on Reuters France. As the French business magazine Challenges […]

Wednesday, March 22, is World Water Day, a time to ponder the issue of worldwide water supplies. Fresh water will be the crucial resource of the next decade or two. Already, one-third of the world’s population don’t have adequate sewage or sanitation. Expect that statistic to get worse. Expect famine to rise as farmers lose […]

GnG reader Marc sent me this recent article about the decline of the California apricot. Farmers struggle against cheap foreign fruits, and for many, the apricot trees no longer turn a profit. Five years ago you could count 100 major apricot growers; now there are 50. In 12 years, most of the current crop of […]

American grocery giant Safeway quietly rolled out an in-house organic line back in December, but now they plan to promote it with a vengeance, according to this article on MS-NBC. The grocery store is the most recent megachain to jump on the organic bandwagon, but the 150 products in the company’s O line represent a […]

Environmentalists know that fresh water is a looming global crisis. At the recent World Water Forum, reports an article at Wired News, experts suggested that a large part of the problem is inefficient water use by farmers. The article closes with cross-border debates that have already sprung up about water availability, conflicts which are sure […]

Haddock, the chef and restaurant owner behind the Knife’s Edge blog, writes about the current state of bans on salmon fishing. He offers an in-depth look at the issues, and then posits a backer for the current ban: aquaculture lobbies.
Maybe his post is a conspiracy theory, as he suggests. But for years he’s lived and […]

American agricultural leaders are pushing for reforms to current immigration laws. The constant stream of unauthorized Mexican workers across the U.S.-Mexico border has been a source of contention for a long time, but farmers now face the repercussions of a labor shortage caused by tightened border security.
As an example, one olive growers’ association estimates […]

This made the rounds a year ago or so, but it’s always a good reminder: The stickers on American produce can tell you if the food is organic or genetically modified. Quoting megnut, who is quoting Food & Wine: “The numbers tell you how the fruit was grown. Conventionally grown fruit has four digits; organically […]

I always support potshots aimed at Whole Foods, such as the ones lobbed by Field Maloney at Slate. The massive grocery chain is big on union-busting and low on locally grown produce.
Still, I have to wonder where the author Maloney has been. The article promises to reveal “organic food’s dark secrets,” but it doesn’t expose […]

Cynics will be surprised to learn that Arizona’s state legislature killed a corporation-friendly bill. The new law would have required a constitutional amendment for any regulations that would affect the state’s food-production industry.
The article reports that state Senator Jake Flake “was trying to elevate the importance of the food-production industry by giving it constitutional protection […]