Beeline to extinction
Civil Eats - 5/27/2010.By Naomi Starkman – According to the recently released annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), more than a third of U.S. managed honeybee colonies – those set up for intensified pollination of commercial crops – failed to survive this past winter. |
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New food-safety rules threaten small, organic farms
Mercury News - 5/26/2010. By Jane Palmer – Willey and his wife, Densesse, own an organic farm just outside of Madera in the central San Joaquin Valley, where they grow lettuce, carrots, cabbage and nearly 50 other hand-harvested vegetables. He and other organic farmers say stricter food-safety regulations, developed after a cluster of outbreaks of bacterial contamination in spinach and lettuce in 2006, threaten the principles upon which their farms are based. |
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Pesticide prompts scuffle over safety in California
Chico Enterprise Record - 5/26/2010.By Jacob Adelman – Los Angeles: The winds that blow across the strawberry fields outside Linda Uvari's home during the spring harvest season carry the tart, sugary smell of the swelling fruits. Uvari fears that they may soon also carry a cancer-causing pesticide. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has proposed replacing a popular fumigant with methyl iodide despite concerns by its own scientific advisory panel that it could poison the air and water. |
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Accounting for increasing energy use by the US food system
Energy Bulletin - 5/26/2010.By Michael Bomford – Energy used by the US food system accounted for 80% of the increase in American energy use between 1997 and 2002, according to a recent report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service. |
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