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Industrial farming is, in some ways, the agricultural equivalent of Detroit’s doomed automakers; an industry in denial, unwilling and unprepared to adapt to an environment altered by climate change. In fact, as the Economist reported last month, America’s commodity crop farmers are hellbent on opposing any form of meaningful climate change legislation, on the grounds that it will destroy their livelihood.

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As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, “We’re at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe.”

Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we’ll have an explosion of pests, including disease- carrying mosquitoes and agriculturally destructive beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other foes of the farmers, who may be forced to use more pesticides as a result.

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Eating Animals, the searing indictment of factory farming that Jonathan Safran Foer spent three years painstakingly researching, has got the champions of cheap chuck circling their wagons and denouncing the celebrated novelist’s latest work as just another piece of fiction.
Chuck Jolley, writing for the Cattle News Network, even questions Foer’s very identity, describing him as [...]

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Millions of Americans will turn out to vote today, and millions more won’t. It’s pretty weird when you think about it. Not voting is like going to a restaurant with some friends, and then, when the waiter brings you the menu, deciding that you can’t be bothered to look at it, so you’re just going to let somebody else decide what you should get.

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Those are just two of the diabolically delicious recipes I found in Ghoulish Goodies, a clever collection of Halloween-themed concoctions. Some are sweet, others savory, but they all sound eerily tasty. I spotted this book at a friend’s house last weekend and essentially stole it after leafing through its pages and finding such ingenious Halloween snacks as Cheddar Eyeballs, Candy Corn Pizza, and Bandaged Fingers, to name just a few of the more than seventy inventive recipes featured in Ghoulish Goodies. The recipes have simple ingredients, easy-to-follow instructions and plenty of photos to inspire you.

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The No Impact Project week’s in full swing now, and those of us who’ve signed on are taking a closer look at our carbon “foodprint” today. So I asked Colin to tell us a bit more about his year-long adventure in ecological eating:

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Two cornerstones of American culture collided Monday night on CNN:
Larry King and cheap processed meat. Or should I say colluded? After all, they’ve got a lot in common: both smush together scraps of debatable value and dubious origin and extrude them as suitable fodder for our more credulous compatriots. And both have the potential to poison us, whether by tainting our food supply with pathogens or contaminating our national conversation with lackeys and lobbyists.

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McCann’s cookbooks, Vegan Lunch Box and her latest, Vegan Lunch Box Around the World, may be geared towards children, but they’re perfect for anyone–kids or no kids–who enjoys simple, eclectic dishes featuring fresh takes on familiar foods. Her stated goal is “to inspire others to eat more healthy, plant-based meals and move more.” I interviewed her recently via email to find out more about how this “bento blogger” became a publishing phenomenon.

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I’m always amazed by the number of folks who think that most of Central Park is some kind of natural habitat of indigenous plants, a pristine terrain onto which we plunked our bike paths, boathouses and pretzel vendors.

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Why support Slow Food USA? Consider the case of Joseph Garcia, an 18 year-old who enrolled at Automotive High intending to become a mechanic. Thanks to Kessler’s class, which relies extensively on help from Slow Food NYC, Garcia found himself drawn instead to a career as a chef.

Garcia took Kessler’s class a year and a half ago, and is now studying the culinary arts at Monroe College. In a recent email exchange he answered my questions about how the Harvest Time program has changed his life:

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