Reader Dan P. writes in to ask: Joe, I read your post on GMO farming with great interest. Would you mind telling me, other than increasing the yields of a crop we don’t need and tinkering with the building blocks of life, what GMO crop developers have really achieved? Dan, I couldn’t be more pleased […]
READ ONToday is going to be a day of summary and conclusion — mainly because I can’t keep up with the volume of email I’m getting! My hope is not to continue this week’s subject into next (as a main theme anyway), for while the political animals and information junkies out there are yelling “Go on! […]
READ ONNotice I didn’t use the word “corn” in the header, primarily because the data I have is for organic agriculture generally. Organic farming is the hardest of all to summarize since organic practices vary so widely. In fact there’s very little agreement these days as to what “organic” actually means. Originally organic was a holistic […]
READ ONWhich is to say genetically modified farming, the use of genetically engineered corn strains to stave off pests and increase yields. Though again, that’s just the beginning of what GMO corn farming actually is. But we’ll get to that. At this juncture I should once again emphasize that everything I’m about to write applies to […]
READ ONFor most people a “conventional farmer” is another way of saying “a farmer who is willing to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides”. That doesn’t really do conventional farmers justice, but for a thumbnail description on a busy Thursday morning, it’ll do. As anyone who’s ever tried to maintain a garden knows, the hardest thing about […]
READ ONA LOT of people are writing in asking why a.) I would choose to side with horrible “agrobusiness” companies like Monsanto, especially when b.) only a tiny proportion of Americans follow Michael Pollan’s advice on organic eating. To that all I can say is a.) I’m not taking sides with Monsanto (you want to hear […]
READ ONCorn, as I’ve written before, is a New World crop. It’s been said that corn is to the Americas what wheat is to Europe and rice is to Asia. More than just a food, it’s practically part of our DNA. Ancient Mesoamericans liked to describe themselves as “corn people” or “corn walking”. Art from the […]
READ ONReader Michael writes in to say: Sorry, Joe, but corn is, in fact, primarily fertilized with a petroleum product. Mass scale corn production requires a massive infusion of fixed nitrogen fertilizers. The primary fertilizer of choice for use with corn is anhydrous ammonia, which is a primarily petroleum based product. So, corn is, in fact, […]
READ ONLet’s stop beating up on poor Michael Pollan for a while, why don’t we, and switch gears to farming. For obviously there are more than a few misconceptions about it out there. I’m not a farmer mind you, though I am descended from a long line of corn and soy farmers and elevator operators (grain […]
READ ONSo far I’ve done my best to call attention to what I think are some of the major logical fallacies that underlie Omnivore’s Dilemma, and by extension Food Inc.. There was Pollan’s cobbled together “agrobusiness” nemesis, an amalgam of everybody from Exxon and Monsanto on down to small family farmers, all of whom think and […]
READ ON