Lloyd Kreitzer’s journey as New Mexico’s premier fig grower.
Agriculture
Posted inFebruary 18, 2013: Farming on the Fringe
Farmers agree to tax those who deplete groundwater
Amid drought and climate change in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, farmers vote for a new approach to rein in their overpumping of groundwater.
Posted inSeptember 17, 2012: Pallids in Purgatory
One Sagebrush Rebellion flickers out — or does it?
“No thief who has to pay for what he steals will steal for long.” — Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, explaining to High Country News in 1995 why he had filed a lawsuit against the federal government over restrictions on his livestock grazing. That landmark Sagebrush Rebellion lawsuit, hailed as protecting the rights of Western ranchers […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2012: Troubled Taos
Love and tomatoes — a natural combination
When other women ask me how I proposed to my wife, the first thing I tell them is that Crissie doesn’t like diamonds. They look at me with either contempt or condescension — the former if they think I’m going to lecture them about African child armies, the latter if they think I’m fool enough […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
Ganjanomics: bringing Humboldt’s shadow economy into the light
One evening last October, I met with Anna Hamilton in the Northern California town of Garberville. A singer-songwriter with a barbwire voice, Hamilton is known locally for her radio show, Rant and Rave, Lock and Load and Shoot Your Mouth Off — which, it turns out, is a pretty good description of her approach to […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
Cattlemen struggle against giant meatpackers and economic squeezes
‘This situation is what I call economic waterboarding.’
Posted inGoat
Thumbs up for Wyo’s wind tax
Wyoming has some of the world’s best winds for generating power. And wind energy developers salivate over all those big, wide-open, unpeopled spaces. It’s no surprise then that turbines have been sprouting in those spaces at a rapid rate over the past year or so, upping the state’s total wind generating capacity by more than […]
Posted inGoat
A change is gonna come
As more consumers choose to eat locally, agribusinesses tailor their ads to fit the market. According to Mark Muller of Civil Eats, this reactionary stance from the corporations is a big shift in our current food system. Lay’s just recently tried on the “local” hat. And Walmart did too last year. But skeptics are put-off […]
Posted inGoat
The cost of progress
The Environmental Working Group just released a two-year study focusing on the toxins found in five minority women at the forefront of environmental justice battles. Within each community, these women work tirelessly to protect citizens from various forms of pollution. And within each of these women, scientists found significantly higher amounts of toxins than other […]
Posted inGoat
Outlawed…
The fruit farmers in Paonia have been a bit worried about our weird weather. Spring came early, so the trees started budding. And this week, it’s been cold – sometimes freezing. If it gets too frosty, we might be out of luck for the season. Something else that’s on farmers’ minds: H.R. 875, a bill […]
Posted inGoat
“Bacterial Economics”
If you’re a skier, you’ve probably schussed on snow made with bacteria. Ski resorts use Pseudomonas syringae as an ice nucleator, which means water freezes around the bacteria quickly to form snowflakes. But don’t worry – the bacteria used are dead and harmless. Now, researchers are finding that P. syringae in its live form could […]
Posted inGoat
Understanding agriculture…and farmers too!
If you know farmers, you know that most of them can be relied upon to provide gloomy reports looking backward and gloomier forecasts going forward. If most of the farmers I know have a good year, they will not talk about it but instead will tell you about all the bad things that are about […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Out in the cold
Selling the family farm severs connection with place and past
Posted inGoat
Agricultural water pollution on the line
The Bush Administration has been trying since 2005 to change Clean Water Act rules so that agricultural interests can dump polluted water into public lakes and streams without obtaining a permit. Each step of the way, Florida environmentalists represented by Earthjustice lawyers have filed lawsuits to block the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) from implementing the […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Climate cash-in
Western farmers and ranchers use crops – and cows – to tap into the carbon market
Posted inWotr
Predator control looks a lot different on the ground
The extremists who are on a mission to eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services would do well to spend time with ranchers who live and work on our Western landscape. There, they might gain an on-the-ground perspective other than their narrowly defined agenda. As the old Greek shepherds — echoing the ancient Greek philosophers […]
Posted inWotr
The ugly economy of killing wildlife
Most Americans have never heard of the federal agency euphemistically known as Wildlife Services. Yet it was a major force in eliminating wolf and grizzly bear populations in the early 20th century, and today spends over $100 million each year using mostly taxpayer dollars to kill more than a million animals — primarily birds — […]