Two weeks ago, in a post on biofuels, I mentioned the effects that increased corn production for ethanol is having on other crops, particularly wheat. Kevin Drum offers his own (much more concise) analysis of the situation: Let’s see: (a) environmentally speaking, corn ethanol is a pretty dodgy idea, (b) we’re subsidizing it anyway to [...]

Actually, plenty of people are. NewMexiKen was wondering back in April (along with the New York Times) and here in Silver City bees have been an issue for the past several weeks. Today in Salon, four experts tackle the declining-bee-population problem: The buzz about the alarming disappearance of bees has been all about people food. [...]

I mention the Farm Bill briefly in today’s article, so, I guess this is a good opportunity to bring up this NY Times Magazine article: Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no [...]