Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
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Food vs. fuel debate, German edition
Defending her country’s biofuel mandates in a time of global food crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently denied that turning food crops into car fuel affects prices. Those looking for reasons behind the recent spike in food prices shouldn’t blame ethanol and biodiesel makers, she argued. Instead, look at how people are eating in the […]
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Three million more acres of industrial corn?
According to USDA projections, U.S. farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008. At any time in the last 50 years, that would be plenty. Since 1958, USDA figures tell us, farmers have broken 80 million acres only ten times. In fact, if farmers meet expectations, 2008 will rank as the second-largest planting […]
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A bright trend for dark times: kitchen gardening
Last week, we ran a guest post about a topic dear to my heart: serious home vegetable gardening. In that piece, Bill Duesing argued that the USDA should take home food production seriously, by providing research and extension services to gardeners. Now Anne Raver, the veteran New York Times garden writer, has come out with […]
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Bush and farm policy ‘reform’
In the farm bill debate, the Bush administration has joined Environmental Defense Fund, The Environmental Working Group, and other Big Green groups in taking a “reform” position: subsidies are bad, so let’s cut them. I’ve been arguing that this position amounts to no reform at all, because it doesn’t address the underlying problem of U.S. […]
