Entries tagged with 'food policy'
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[iStockphoto: thebroker] In Serious Green, we recently told you about some food and environmental films that go beyond the popular Food Inc. Thanks to everyone for chiming in with even more suggestions. Here are a few more good ones: Food Fight (not to be confused with this Food Fight) is a look at the development of American agriculture and policy in the 20th century and the birth of the counter-revolution of the local and organic foods movement. Food Stamped follows a nutrition educator and her husband as they do their best to eat healthy food on a weekly $50 food stamp budget. What's On Your Plate? is a documentary that follows two 11-year-old New Yorkers, Sadie and Safiyah, as...
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Photograph from morning_rumtea on Flickr Farmers have been purposefully leaving edges of their fields unharvested and fruit unpicked for the less fortunate since biblical times. Today, groups around the country are translating that idea and encouraging us to do the same--by picking the fruit from your neighbor's tree. Photograph from Muffet on Flickr Urban fruit-harvesting groups started in places where there are abundant fruit trees, such as California. But groups are now popping up all over the U.S. and the world. All of them have one thing in common: making use of food that would otherwise go unused (i.e., rot on the sidewalk). Some groups gather wild food that's growing in a public space, such as a traffic median;...
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If you're starting to feel overwhelmed by all the recent talk about food policy, local eating, and industrial farms it might be time to stop reading and just look at some photos. Over at the blog U.S. Food Policy: A Public Interest Perspective, Parker Wilde has rounded up the top ten U.S. Food Policy Destinations that are an effect of (or are affecting) current food policy in the U.S. today. Wilde, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University is a food economist and teaches classes on food policy. He highlights the small farm that Michael Pollan made famous in The Omnivore's Dilemma along with the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. What makes his...
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Stinky cheese lovers, rejoice! While the US had been threatening to impose a 300% tax on Roquefort cheese—in response to the EU’s refusal to import hormone-treated beef—that twice-delayed tariff is now off the table. Roquefort prices should stay safely where they are....
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There are many signs that the Obamas care about good food eaten for pleasure and for our health. Food politics authority Marion Nestle shares some of her thoughts.
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Andrew Martin in the New York Times tries to assess the state of the food revolution in this country in the age of Obama. As Martin notes, there are undeniably promising signs: Michelle Obama's beetless organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn and her statements in support of, in Martin's words, "fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food." Agriculture secretary Vilsack, a former ethanol champion, seems to have found sustainable-and-local-if-possible food-supply religion. His top deputy, Kathleen Kerrigan, is a "longtime champion of sustainable agriculture and healthy food."...
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Black-hooved Iberico pigs in Spain. Photograph from Shoes on Wires on Flickr About a year ago, Iberico hams, the most gourmet of Spanish piggies, were first sold in the United States. They arrived with black hooves on—a symbol of Spanish hospitality and a guarantee of Iberico authenticity. Now after a USDA ruling effective January 2009, all hams will arrive "pata negra sin pata" (without the telltale black hoof). To make it worse, the ruling added a punitive 100 percent tariff on all bone-in Iberico hams, which will double the price of any delivered after March 2009. So one of these ridiculously expensive (and seriously delicious) $1,400 hams will now set you back $2,800. Talk about starting the year off...
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Photograph from Wikimedia Commons For the last eight years, Americans have seen their fair share of questionable leadership and head-scratching policy decisions. Leave it to Dubya, however, to save the best for last. The Agence France-Presse is reporting that before leaving office, Bush has enacted legislation that will increase tariffs on France's beloved Roquefort cheese to 300 percent, an amount that would make purchasing it in the U.S. untenable. As the Huffington Post pointed out yesterday, Bush has never been known for his gastronomic tendencies, preferring canned vegetables to fresh, so it isn't too surprising that he would use Roquefort as a pawn in a trade war that began when the E.U. banned growth hormone-treated meat in the late...
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It's a little late now that President-elect Barack Obama has opted to keep on Cristeta Comerford in the White House chef position, but gourmet.com has published food guru Alice Waters' open letter to the Obamas, "in its full, final form." (NB: If you've ever wanted to forge Waters' signature, here's your chance.)...
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We all project our hopes and dreams onto Obama. I just think in this case we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. Many serious eaters have high hopes for the Obama administration when it comes to food matters. They think he will champion Michael Pollan–like causes, such as local, organic, and sustainable food, along with a farm bill that Pollan and company will approve of. With his inauguration a week away it's time to ask the following essential food question: Are those hopes realistic or misplaced? Food Not a High Priority for Obama I think the evidence shows these hopes to be misplaced. Or at the very least we should recognize that food issues are not very high on Barack Obama's...
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