The way headlines broke after a recent Stanford study comparing organic food to food grown on conventional farms, you’d think organic had been shot and left for dead. The New York Times, for example, announced that “Stanford scientists cast doubt on advantages of organic meat and produce.” Maybe the doubt was inferred from the study’s […]
Ari LeVaux
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Megadrought, the new normal
In a dirt parking lot near Many Farms, Ariz., a Navajo farmer sold me a mutton burrito. He hasn’t used his tractor in two years, he told me; he has to cook instead of farm because “there isn’t any water.” He pointed east at the Chuska Mountains, which straddle the New Mexico border. In a […]
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How to heat-proof your garden
Across the Midwest, New England and Canada, high-temperature records are being broken by the thousands — 3,350 of them between March 12-18 alone. Meteorologists are scrambling to find anything comparable to weather that has been described as “summer in March.” Two days before the official end of winter, temperatures of 94 degrees Fahrenheit were recorded […]
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For the love of garlic
Garlic: I can’t live without it. I’ve been growing this onion relative since the mid-1990s and have learned that good garlic is the product of both nature and nurture – good genes and good cultivation. Now is the best time to buy garlic for planting because it was just harvested in August, and the best […]
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Food safety is a matter of power
In Venice, Calif., the Rawesome raw-food club was raided Aug. 3 by armed federal and county agents who arrested a volunteer and seized computers, files, cash and $70,000 worth of perishable produce. Club founder and manager James Stewart, 64, was charged with 13 counts, 12 of them related to the processing and sale of unpasteurized […]
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Monsanto wins, for now
The Obama administration struck a blow against freedom for food and agriculture in late January, when the U.S. Agriculture Department deregulated genetically modified alfalfa seed. The agency’s decision threatens to deprive farmers of the right to produce milk and meat free of genetic tampering, and it also threatens the right of consumers to purchase unadulterated […]
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How to play the gardening game
In his book “Jaguars Ripped my Flesh,” Tim Cahill tells us that he “sits around at home reading wilderness survival books the way some people peruse seed catalogs or accounts of classic chess games.” As a seed-catalog peruser, I took offense at first at being lumped in with the chess nerds. But after giving it […]
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Advice from the Loser School of Hunting
The less successful a hunter you are, the more practice you’re going to get, because failure means you have to go back out there again and again. If you bagged your beast early, then evidently you didn’t need any extra practice. Otherwise, consider yourself enrolled in the Loser School of Hunting. Many factors must come […]
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Organic goes down a slippery road
Here’s the sad news: Even as the demand for organic food continues to explode, organic farmers in America are getting thrown under the very beet cart they helped build. The Chinese are taking over market share, especially of vegetables and agricultural commodities like soy, thanks to several American-based multinational food corporations that have hijacked the […]
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Thinking green in the midst of winter
Gardening season starts when you open your first seed catalog in the dead of winter, and it doesn’t end until you’ve dug up the last carrot, plucked the final Brussels sprout or eaten your last pickled pepper of the season. The rewards of gardening begin the minute you open that catalog — long before you […]
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Animal pharm is coming our way
On Sept. 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released its “guidance” for allowing the sale of genetically modified animals as food. Guidance is agency-speak for “the law will look something like this.” With the announcement, a 60-day period for public comment opened. Right now, the only genetically modified animal licensed for sale is the […]
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Death to cheeseburgers? Maybe not
If you’re concerned about the effect your food choices have on the environment, you might want to reconsider cheeseburgers. A recent study shows that beef and milk products are the world’s most polluting foods, thanks to the greenhouse gases released by cows. Meanwhile, in what has to be awkward news for locavores, the study, reported […]
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How to adopt a garden
The pioneer archetype looms large in the West. Strong and largely fictional, this heroic frontiersman delivered a calf at midnight in the blowing snow, mended fence all day and still had time to ride home into the sunset. Yet while one pioneer tended the herd, you can bet another was tending the garden, making applesauce, […]
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Easter and the urban farmer
If she’d lived, this Easter would have been the fourth birthday of my eldest hen, Annabelle. She was the last of a tribe all named Annabelle, all of whom arrived as day-old chicks on Easter Sunday 2004. In the intervening years, various Annabelles fell prey to dogs, skunks and finally, last week, raccoons. Such is […]