Agriculture

Spuds anyone?

Devin Foote is a 24-year-old beginning farmer at Common Ground Farm in Beacon, New York. Throughout the growing season, Devin will be chronicling his experiences as a young farmer growing for a local food system.

Close Encounters of the Mashed Potato Kind

In one of two new videos released last week, a boy named Dreyfus builds a mash potato mountain at the school lunch table. This spoof of Close Encounters of the Third Kind has Dreyfus telling his classmates, "What we eat.

Bridging the GAPs: Strategies to Improve Produce Safety, Preserve Farm Diversity and Strengthen Local Food Systems

In the absence of federal regulations governing food safety at the farm level, a growing number of wholesale and institutional produce buyers are requiring farmers to comply with a food safety protocol and pass a third party audit in order to sell their product.

Farm to Fork Dilemmas for Food Safety

Farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs) are the ultimate in food traceability. But they make up only a tiny portion of the food system. The rest is more difficult. There's been a decade-old global push for an integrated food safety system from farm to fork.

A life in the (commodity futures) pits

My Aunt Kathryn is the only person that I know who successfully and consistently invested in the commodities futures markets. During a visit to her and Uncle Claude's farm, as a 15-year-old, I tried to understand why she needed all those newspapers, a calculator and notebooks spread out on the kitchen table.

Do we need industrial agriculture to feed the world?

Okay, only fair to warn you. I do not answer the question here. Second, the subject is not really one for a blog, more for a book. But it's important to say short things as well as long. Third, I have a bias. We all do. In this case, it matters that I like Michael Pollan's writing and that I believe there is much wrong with conventional agriculture as practiced in the United States.

Smart Guide Hormones in the Food System

Hormones are routinely used in meat and dairy production as growth promoters, given to dairy cows to increase milk production, hormone -active pesticides are sprayed on crops, are used in plastic food packaging and can be found in the industrial chemicals and byproducts, used in industrial processes, which also make their way into the food chain.

Transportation and sustainable food systems: an open policy window?

IATP is exploring the roles that different federal departments and agencies play in America’s food system.

Letter to Congressional Leadership Calling for Aggregate Position Limits

IATP, along with other members of the Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition (CMOC), sent this letter to the Congressional leadership calling for the same aggregate position limits for all market participants along with other measures in order to level the playing field.