politics

There was an article in Salon the other day that I almost blogged about, but it seemed like such as setup: Hipsters on Food Stamps. The article was a profile of out-of-work “hipsters” in the Bay Area, New York, Baltimore and other urban areas who were, thanks to the ongoing recession and the stimulus...
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So. Jeans. A perennial problem, the jeans. Remember when we were kids (you geezers out there like me) and there were just jeans. There weren’t five thousand different styles and different fabrics and different makes. There were jeans. Usually Levis. I gave up on jeans a few years ago. Every time I’d find a...
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Over at Alternet, Kate Pickett, and Richard Wilkinson have a fascinating introduction to their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. It’s no surprise to anyone who has been reading this site that I think we all need to re-evaluate ideas like “standard of living” and “economic growth” — here...
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Here’s a link to the USDA News Release about the Child Nutrition Act and what’s been added to it. The list looks promising. It includes: Improve nutrition standards. Establishing improved nutrition standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and taking additional steps to ensure compliance with these standards; Increase access...
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Hi folks — working on a really exciting redesign, so expect to see the maintenance mode page again over the next week or so. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about school food. The Billings Gazette had a piece about an elementary school that was about to start offering breakfast to all...
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There’s been a lot of noise on the foodie twitter/blogosphere about the EPA’s reluctance to ban Atrazine. As someone who grew up in the midwest, and who has relatives who grow corn and soybeans, let me tell you, that stuff is everywhere. I’ve also long wondered whether the sharp increase in agricultural chemicals was...
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Residents in parish of Martin join forces to feed themselves | Society | The Guardian. Nick Snelgar, who earns a living from growing herbs and shrubs near his home in Martin, thought it was crazy that he could not eat local produce. “It would be fresher, tastier and more nutritious than anything from the...
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Steve Sando and I had some good emails back and forth back in the day when we were both grumpy with Slow Food and Alice Waters. He grows the most DELICIOUS beans in the world. I can unabashedly plug them. Even if you think they’re too expensive and that buying beans by mail (as...
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Ill-conceived from the start, and as usual, a program with paperwork burdens that were prohibitive for small farmers, looks like the USDA has come to its senses and killed NAIS. U.S.D.A. Will Drop Program to Trace Livestock – NYTimes.com.
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In farming news, I was heartened by this editorial by Tom Vlisak, Secretary of Agriculture about his plans for revitalizing rural America. There’s still more in there for Big Ag than I really like, especially the biofuels stuff (we still haven’t figured out a way to make a biofuel that doesn’t require more fuel...
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