It Takes HOW Much Water to Grow an Avocado?!
We've heard a lot about how the boom in almond and other nut production is straining California's dwindling water supplies amid the state's worst-ever drought. But what about the avocado, another...
View ArticleAre Your Chicken Nuggets Ruining Your Antibiotic Ointment?
Last week, the FDA released a report on the gross amount of antibiotics purchased by the livestock industry in 2012. The results are a bit startling. Between 2009 and 2012—a period of increasing...
View ArticleHow Monsanto Crashed SXSW—and Brought the Drama to My Panel [UPDATED]
UPDATE: In an emailed statement, SXSW Eco director Scott Wilcox wrote that Monsanto had openly submitted, via Panel Picker, another panel, "Bees: What the Buzz is All About," which the organizers...
View ArticleYou Thought California's Drought Couldn't Get Any Worse? Enter Fracking.
I have a great idea. Let's take one of the globe's most important agricultural regions, one with severe water constraints and a fast-dropping water table. And let's set up shop there with a highly...
View ArticleMcDonald's Had to Hire a Fact-Checker to Prove It Serves Real Food
For McDonald's, 2014 has been like a Happy Meal that's missing a trinket: a major bummer. Its China operations (along with those other US fast-food firms) got caught up in an expired-meat scandal that...
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Everything You Didn't Want to Know About Hormel, Bacon, and Amputated Limbs
Much of the outrage generated by the meat industry involves the rough treatment of animals. But as Ted Genoways shows in his searing new book, The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food—which...
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The Feds Just Approved a New GMO Corn. Here's Why I'm Not Rejoicing
In September, the US Department of Agriculture greenlighted new GMO corn and soybean products engineered to resist two kinds of herbicides, Roundup (glyphosate) and an older, more toxic one called...
View ArticleEPA: Those Bee-Killing Pesticides? They're Actually Pretty Useless
So, there's this widely used class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, marketed by chemical giants Bayer and Syngenta, that have emerged as a primesuspect in honeybee collapse, and may also be...
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Why Did Top Scientific Journals Reject This Dr. Bronner's Ad?
David Bronner, CEO of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, presides over a company with famously wacky product labels. Sample sentence, from the 18-in-1 Hemp PEPPERMINT soap bottle: "Each swallow works hard to...
View ArticleThe Midwest's Vast Farms Are Losing a Ton of Money This Year
Think you have it tough at work? Consider the plight of the Midwest's corn and soybean farmers. They churn out the basic raw materials of our food system: the stuff that gets turned into animal feed,...
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These Maps of California's Water Shortage Are Terrifying
Just how bad is California's water shortage? Really, really bad, according to these new maps, which represent groundwater withdrawals in California during the first three years of the state's ongoing...
View Article"Wild-Caught," Eh? 30 Percent of Shrimp Labels Are False
Shrimp is America's favorite seafood—we eat more of it than any other kind, by a wide margin. And the tasty crustacean still (more or less) thrives near our ample shores—from the Pacific Northwest to...
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