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America: Becoming a Land Without Farmers

September 10, 2012 (Un)Sustainable Farming, Commentaries, Environment 5 Comments
Abandoned Farmhouse

Evaggelos Vallianatos (Photo Credit: Homini:))

The plutocratic remaking of America has a parallel in the countryside. In rural America less than 3 percent of farmers make more than 63 percent of the money, including government subsidies.

The results of this emerging feudal economy are everywhere. Large areas of the United States are becoming impoverished farm towns with abandoned farmhouses and deserted land. More and more of the countryside has been devoted to massive factory farms and plantations. The consequences, though worse now than ever, have been there for all to see and feel, for decades. … Continue Reading

Designed to Fail: Why Regulatory Agencies Don’t Work

May 1, 2012 Commentaries, Environment, Health 19 Comments
EPA Cleans up the San Juan River oil spill disaster 1972

William Sanjour*

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have been “reforming” regulatory agencies over and over again, and over and over again they have failed. Yet, as a result of the recent catastrophic failures of regulatory agencies, politicians and pundits are talking about the same old “Regulatory Reform” again.  “Fill the regulatory agencies with honest people who won’t cave in to special interests.”  “Give them more money, more authority and more people.”  But my experience has shown that by concentrating all legislative, executive and judiciary authority in one regulatory agency just makes it easier for it to be corrupted by the industries it regulates.

I worked for the US Environmental Protection agency for 30 years and lived through many cycles of “Regulatory Reform,” doing the same “reforms” over and over again and expecting different results. I’ve learned that the way to achieve true regulatory reform is to give regulatory agencies less money, less authority, fewer people but more intelligent regulations. The theme of this article is that by dispersing regulatory authority, rather than concentrating it, we would make corruption more difficult and facilitate more sensible regulation.
… Continue Reading

USDA Top Officials Versus USDA Data

June 25, 2008 Commentaries, Science Media Comments Off
USDA Top Officials Versus USDA Data

Daryll E. Ray, the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee. He is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC).

The recent Rome food summit was dominated by some rather intemperate exchanges over whether biofuels were a significant cause of higher food prices. Shortly before the summit, on May 19, USDA held a reporter briefing which argued, in contradiction to our regular column (www.agpolicy.org), that Chinese and Indian food imports were a significant factor in these price hikes. In the column we said, “China has increased its consumption of meats [beef, pork, broilers] at a rate well above the rate of population increase.” But we also noted, “China produces virtually all of the meat that is domestically consumed, and then some. In fact China was a net meat exporter for the last 7 years and 14 of the last 18 years.”

… Continue Reading

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Commentaries

The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science

R Goodman

by Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, …

Is the Hidden Viral Gene Safe? GMO Regulators Fail to Convince

EFSA Head Office

by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD Having unwittingly allowed a viral gene into the food chain, the response of regulators so far has been to release statements intended to allay public concerns. These statements, however, are inadequate to meet a potentially major food crisis. Not only do they …

Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

Cauliflower Mosaic Virus

by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson How should a regulatory agency announce they have discovered something potentially very important about the safety of products they have been approving for over twenty years? In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) …

How Millions of Farmers are Advancing Agriculture For Themselves

SRI-grown Rice in China

by Jonathan Latham The world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the United States, but by Sumant Kumar who has a farm of just two hectares in Darveshpura village in the state of Bihar in Northern …

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Reviews

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

The China Study

Author: T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II ISBN: 1932100660, 978-1932100662 Publisher: Benbella Books (2004) What will it take for veggie stir-fry on rice to replace a beef burger on a bun as the all-American meal? A switch to a more plant-based diet has been standard dietary advice …

The Unhealthy Truth: How our Food is Making us Sick and What We Can Do About It

The Unhealthy Truth

Author: Robyn O’Brien (with Rachel Kranz) ISBN: 978-0-7679-3071-0 Publisher: Broadway books (2009) Allergies and food intolerances are serious medical conditions. They are the cause of many deaths and hospitalizations annually and they predispose to other illnesses. They can also exact a high toll in other ways since worry, inconvenience and …

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