Growers and Grocers

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s blog recently departed from its normal reprints of speeches and interviews to counter the assertions made by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan uses Whole Foods as a symbol of industrialized organic food, which improves on conventional farming but offers its own set of problems.
Mackey has a reputation […]

One of the basic tenets of Growers and Grocers is that shoppers have a right to information about the food they buy. Choosing what to eat is one of the most political things we do in modern society: Your food dollars vote for fragile agriculture, exploitive practices, and poor quality.
For the month of May, […]

Parke Wilde of the U.S. Food Policy blog neatly skewers the U.S. Pork Board’s report about air quality near hog farms. Waste from Industrial livestock facilities is notoriously hard on neighbors’ noses. Even the descriptions of towns near beef factories make a reader gag.
But, says Parke, the Pork Board “gushed” about the findings on local […]

The Blog for Rural America shares the news that a federal jury in South Dakota ruled that the three largest American meat packers violated the Packers and Stockyards Act when “their conduct during the period had the purpose or effect of injuring competition in the fed cattle market.”
Tyson, Cargill, and Swift neglected to tell beef […]

The Center for Rural America’s blog is running a “message from the trenches” from young cotton farmer. The author is trying to make it as a small farmer, but he argues that the current state of the farm bill favors the large megafarms that surround him.
Small farms represent a better investment for the farmers, the […]

Jen Maiser, Life Begins at 30’s blogger extraordinaire, posted an announcement that the next Eat Local Challenge will take place in May. For those who don’t know about this movement, the challenge encourages participants to eat food grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of your home. Everyone can set their own parameters: Most people […]

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 […]

When I first heard of the USDA’s National Animal ID System (NAIS), I thought it was a good idea. I believe food should be traceable back to its source, and what better way to do that than tag each animal? So when Susan of Farmgirl Fare sent an email urging people to protest the initiative, […]

The Flaming Grasshopper, a blog from progressive publisher Chelsea Green,has a post about Nebraska’s attempts to save “Initiative 300,” a law that prevents corporate ownership of farms. According to TFG, this is one of the strongest such laws in the country, but a federal judge has declared it unconstitutional. The state is appealing the judgment.
The […]

Tana Butler of the Small Farms blog was lucky enough to attend Eco-Farm 2006, a conference about sustainable agriculture that convened in her home town of Santa Cruz.
She’s started her write-up with the description of the first day’s event, a tour of local farms. I’ll add to this post as she puts up more descriptions. […]