Agriculture

Good Jobs, Green Jobs... for everyone!

IATPers Jim Harkness, Lindsay Dahl and I are all at the "Green Jobs, Good Jobs" conference in Pittsburgh today and it has been a very powerful and uplifting experience.

Food Sovereignty in North America

Earlier this month, I attended the Canadian Dairy Farmers annual policy conference in Ottawa, Canada. I was to provide a U.S. perspective on the topic of food sovereignty. The Canadian Dairy Farmers represent over 15,000 farmers across Canada.

The Travesty of Child Labor

Mark Muller’s personal account of his work with a farmer cooperative in Honduras that uses child labor points to the complexities of this issue. As Mark suggests, there are many factors contributing to child labor, some domestic, some related to free trade.

Child Labor and Shades of Gray

IATP Senior Fellow Mark Muller is working in a volunteer program in Honduras through July. He will blog periodically on his experiences there. “A liberal is just a conservative that hasn’t been mugged yet.”

Clinton campaign responds to huge beef recall

Senator Hillary Clinton has responded to the animal abuse at the Hallmark/Westland slaughter house and a subsequent recall of 143 million pounds of ground beef, much of it already consumed by school children. The response reflects just how difficult it is to propose policy while responding on the campaign trail to widely publicized events.

Climate Solutions

Perhaps no industry will be more affected by climate change than agriculture. Cropping patterns, pests and plant disease, and access to water will combine to profoundly affect our ability to produce food. And rising fossil fuel prices will undoubtedgly affect fertilizer, pesticide and machinery costs for farmers.

More corn. More GMOs. More Pests?

We've written about the environmental drawbacks of major increases in corn production in the U.S., particularly related to nitrogen runoff into waterways. But another potential problem is looming.