Barack Obama unveils agriculture plan

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama unveiled his agriculture plan yesterday on the campaign trail in Iowa. The plan includes all kinds of proposals that the Obama camp hopes will excite […]

Time to think about the global food system

An excellent article, "The Globalization of Hunger," appears over at the Madre website on the absurdities (as in moving food all over the globe) and injustices (kicking people off their land so agribusiness can grow exportable crops) of the global agricultural system.

How the nation’s breadbasket is poisoning its own water supply

In late September, the corn and soybean fields of the lower Missouri River floodplain are a lovely dull brown, nearly ready for harvest. The row crops sprawl as far as […]

A wonderful dinner celebrating Fergus Henderson at Manhattan’s Savoy

Fergus Henderson Photo: Savoy. To certain vegans — the sort who recently saw fit to flay a chef who supports small farmers in the middle of Iowa (see comments below […]

Noticing the elephant stomping Africa

Bob ("Prisoner of Trebekistan") Harris notices how often U.S. media aids and abets counterproductive U.S. foreign "aid" policies.

The same people whose worship of the so-called free market allows them to demolish countries are the ones leading the Bush Administration's efforts to ensure that the global response to global heating doesn't adopt any heresies. Which is why our policy response to global heating has been zilch.

A conversation with Michael Pollan

  In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz’s definition of cuisine came down […]

Images of a sustainable-food revolution

Imagine a place where residents pull together to create a thriving store and restaurant serving fresh, local food. Imagine a place where the money appears, the dreams become real, the […]

Anti-bottled-water campaign kicks off in cities across U.S.

A Think Outside the Bottle campaign kicked off today, urging municipal governments to cut off bottled-water contracts and to press for greater disclosure of the source of bottled H2O. The […]

In the farm belt, a look at the extremes of agricultural production

When I arrived in Iowa on a reporting trip this summer, I expected to experience it with city eyes: frankly, as a rural backwater. I’ve lived on a farm in […]

Evaluating U.S. and EU policies

The last couple of months I've been busy preparing two major reports on government support for biofuels, both for the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). These reports follow on from our October 2006 report on support for biofuels in the United States, which we commissioned from Doug Koplow of Earth Track, and which has been cited numerous times on these pages.

Last month, we issued what we call our "Synthesis Report," our overview of government support for biofuels in selected OECD countries. Coming out right on the heels of the so-called "OECD Paper" (actually, a discussion document for a meeting of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, to which I contributed), "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in Selected OECD Countries" hasn't yet attracted much attention in the press. It is rather dense in parts, I'll admit. But it contains some crunchy numbers.

For example, we estimate that total support to biofuels in OECD countries was at least $11 billion in 2006, with most of that provided by the U.S. and the EU. Expressed in terms of dollars per greenhouse-gas emissions avoided, the levels vary widely, but in almost all countries, whether for ethanol and biodiesel, they exceed $250 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. That is several multiples of the highest price of a CO2-equivalent offset yet achieved on the European Climate Exchange.

Then, last week, we released our long-awaited report on "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the European Union" ...