Civil Eats

Last week the White House released its National Bioeconomy Blueprint  (PDF) which “outlines steps that agencies will take to drive the bioeconomy—economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences—and details ongoing efforts across the Federal government to realize this goal.”

Unfortunately, this new bioeconomy is not as green as the Obama administration is making it out to be. The so-called bioeconomy is dependent primarily on the risky, unregulated field of synthetic biology and the use of unsustainably produced biomass to feed synthetic organisms created by these technologies. The National Bioeconomy Blueprint, while offering little in new substantive policy, causes more harm than good by giving the green light to the growth and profit of the synthetic biology industry without making any real effort to protect people and the environment from the novel risks posed by this emerging technology. Read More

Last Friday, the USDA announced the partial deregulation of genetically modified sugar beets, defying a court order to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in advance of a decision. This move follows on the heels of the full deregulation late last month of genetically modified (GM) alfalfa, the fourth most common row crop in the United States, which is most often used as feed for cattle.

If you eat beef, or take milk and sugar in your coffee (and even if you don’t), here is why you should care: The move could put organic foods at risk for contamination and make it more expensive. Read More

On one of the hottest days of 2010, Santa Cruz, California was blessed with the unveiling of The Penny Ice Creamery, one out of a handful of ice cream shops in the country that are licensed pasteurizers.  Just a few short months later, business partners Kendra Baker and Zachary Davis are seeing their dream realized, a difficult balance to achieve in our current economic climate.  However, despite the financial crisis, or perhaps because of it, they are the first people to admit that much of their success was made possible by Obama’s stimulus plan.  On the heels of the Penny’s now famous YouTube video, thanking the administration for the Recovery Act (which prompted a live call from Vice President Biden), I sat down with the pair to hear directly about the ins and outs of their business. Read More

When the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) met in Chicago May 3rd-6th they were, no doubt, elated to hear that the U.S. State Department would be aggressively confronting critics of agricultural biotechnology.

Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs noted that the State Department was ready to take on the naysayers. In addition to confronting the critics, Fernandez stated they would be building alliances (presumably with the biotech industry and foreign governments), anticipating roadblocks to acceptance and highlighting the science. Read More

“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.”  President-elect Barack Obama, December 17, 2008, Chicago, Illinois.

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy.  It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short. Read More

A year after America voted for the change-agent they saw in Barack Obama, advocates hoping for deep improvements in our food system can point to only a few successes, while other policies that could lead to food insecurity are brewing in back rooms. Read More

“Lobbyists won’t find a job in my White House.” President Obama assured us with this claim upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products. Read More

The industrial agriculture complex has been doing back flips for the last few weeks, first because of the ascendance of Blanche Lincoln (ConservaDem-AR) to the high throne of the Senate Agriculture Committee, where she promises to pinch climate legislation (or at the very least shove it aside until next year) and push a southern Big Ag agenda in the Senate for rice and cotton interests. Now, the White House has announced Islam A. Siddiqui, current Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America (you will remember the organization as the one that sent the First Lady a letter admonishing her for not using pesticides on the White House garden) as nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, who works through the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to promote our crops and ag products abroad. Read More

The United States Department of Agriculture agreed last week to buy an additional $30 million dollars worth of pork from the ailing pork industry, for a total of $151 million dollars purchased this year, as recompense for supposed damage wrought by the emergence of the swine flu in our common public lexicon (and the result will no doubt keep kids in public schools flush with factory-farmed sausage pizza this year).

The industry has been pushing the American media and our politicians to refer to the virus instead as “novel H1N1,” which is indeed a scientific way to reference the flu. But “swine flu” has stuck because this is a virus that has passed between humans and pigs. It is uncertain still how the virus evolved and from where exactly, but as we are producing a glut of pork in the US it is not far off to consider that keeping thousands of pigs in close confinement in order to create cheap meat could be exacerbating the potential for disease. Read More

On Saturday it was reported that Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff is stepping down from his position to “pursue opportunities in agriculture in the private sector.” This is not surprising, considering that PA governor Ed Rendell was looking to get rid of Wolff. But now that Wolff is hunting for a job, we thought it valuable here at Civil Eats to revisit why Dennis Wolff is not qualified for the role as head of the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the USDA — a vital position overseeing America’s meat, egg and dairy supply — where he has previously been floated as a candidate. Read More

“…the global economy and ecology are both systems. Global causes are systemic, not local. Global risk is systemic, not local. The localization of causation and risk is what has brought about our twin disasters. We have to think in global, system terms and we don’t do so naturally. That is why a massive communications effort is needed.” – George Lakoff

As an ecologically-minded horticulturist, I like to think about everything with an ecological framework. Ecology, simply, is the study of organisms in relation to other organisms and the environment. Many things could be said to be wrong with the state of our nation’s political life, but if there is one to emphasize, it is the lack of a political ecology.  We tend to compartmentalize political issues, along the lines of our individual political identities (sometimes referred to as issues “silos”), and this often negates efforts to connect the dots between diverse issues.

If there is one political identity that should be able to look past these divides and see the importance of ecological connections between movements and struggles, it is that of the environmentalist. The environmentalist’s worldview is steeped in the interdependent view of life; the understanding that one action can cause reactions beyond the expected.  And the most visible (and seemingly the most active) environmentalists, these days, are the food sustainability activists.  Yet even food activists themselves have their silos: urban food access, farmland preservation, nutrition education, and so on. I hope this article will help us see our commonality outside of our silos, and see how to use that to better work towards change. Read More

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan just sent out a really exciting memo [pdf]: “Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems,” which goes far beyond fantasies of how a new food system might look, and straight into how this gets both funded and created. Merrigan’s new memo details how to use USDA funding for the kind of projects that are being developed by First Lady Michelle Obama and her food policy team, such as school lunch infrastructure, farmers markets, farm to school programs, cooking classes. Read More

President Obama’s plans to reform the healthcare system in U.S. have taken over the headlines in the past several weeks. Doctors, economists, insurance executives, public health experts—all of them are being afforded the chance add their two cents on how to fix our broken healthcare system. The voices that are strikingly absent, though, are those of the agricultural community. What, you may ask, does agriculture have to do with overhauling the healthcare system? My answer– everything. Read More