Our herbivore friends love telling us that vegetarianism is how they battle climate change - meat production is totally energy inefficient compared to plant production, and cows, specifically, produce a hell of a lot of methane.

It's a compelling argument, and yeah, we'd probably have a tough time reading an article on global warming while eating most burgers without feeling the distinct pangs of cognitive dissonance.

So when the Norwegian whaling lobby pulled the climate change card to defend hunting whales, we did a double take. Rune Froevik, head of a Norwegian whaling lobby, is heady with their new study claiming the greenhouse impact of eating eight meals of whale is equivalent to eating only one meal of beef. "Basically," Froevik says, "It turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat."

Hmm, maybe. Of course, any wild-caught food -- including game, fish, and, yes, whale, or a vegetarian diet -- will reduce greenhouse emissions compared to ranched beef. And the study doesn't consider whether contributing to the ongoing mass extinction of oceanic megafauna in the service of greenhouse reduction is ethically or ecologically defensible and supportable.

Japan and Norway, the last surviving whaling nations still bucking the 22-year-old international moratorium on whaling, are starting to get a little desperate for reasons to keep the practice going. The Japanese have started turning whale into school cafeteria mystery-meat; the Norwegians are playing to the global warming crowd.

Via Reuters

Once again, the actions of the Dole Food Company prove that if you're a big corporation working overseas, you can screw over whomever you want. Despite a long history of knowingly exposing Nicaraguan banana workers to a poisonous, often debilitating pesticide called Nemagon, Dole has been virtually let off the hook by an LA court. The original and puny $5 million has been reduced to $2.5 million for the 12 workers who were sterilized by the active ingredient in Nemagon called dibromo-chloro-propoane (DBCP). It has affected about 20,500 men, women and children giving them moderate to severe physiological and psychological health complications.

Dole's history with Nemagon has been a sordid one. There were unpublished findings of the pesticide's effects back in 1958 covered up by Dow Chemical and Shell Oil. After cases of sterility showed up in California, the active ingredient was banned in 1979 in the U.S. But not elsewhere. Protests ensued, marches against the company continued. A case in Nicaragua found Dole guilty (Nicaraguan Law 364) but Dole said that it wasn't a legitimate court, and said the trial would have to move to the US.

A few of us from Envirovore were in Nicaragua last year and asked the US Embassy in Managua about the case. The representative we spoke to said that the “most tragic part” of the Dole case is that Dole withdrew from Nicaragua and took jobs with them. Oh really? That's the most tragic part? And here we thought the tragedy was sterility, neurological effects and devastation to workers' lives. Thanks for setting us straight, Embassy!

USDA is refusing to make a list of at least 10,000 food distributors public following the Hallmark/Westland slaughterhouse scandal last month. Apparently, the recalled meat could still be on grocery store shelves.

The American Meat Institute and other trade groups say they don't want to "confuse" consumers or drive them away from particular brands by disclosing this product information.

Isn't that the point of a food recall?

Then again, USDA's meat recall didn't involve all the important players. Yes, USDA recalled meat from its federal programs, like the National School Lunch Program. But when it comes to the hundreds of food retailers and manufacturers who used Hallmak/Westland meat, the recall was optional.

Farm field as Superfund site? Such a concept may not be far off.

For decades, sewage sludge has been used as fertilizer on farms across the nation. Though controversial, EPA and USDA assert that "biosolids" are a safe alternative to commercial fertilizers. Of the 7 million tons of sewage sludge produced each year, more than half is applied to farmland as a free service to farmers. The rest is burned or buried (a more costly method of disposal).

But a recent court ruling has validated opponents' concerns that sewage sludge contains toxic substances, including unhealthy levels of heavy metals that inevitably land in the bellies of livestock and consumers.

At issue were the deaths of hundreds of cows, which the farmer links to sewage sludge poisoning (the cows ate sludge-treated hay), and a federal court judge agreed, ordering USDA to compensate the farmer for his damages.

Making matters worse, some of the contaminants responsible for the cows' deaths were found in milk marketed by a neighboring dairy farm. One of the pollutants, thallium, a former rat poison, was found in the milk at a level 120 times the allowable amount by EPA standards for drinking water. EPA lists thallium as a toxic heavy metal and USDA considers it a potential threat to the food supply if used as a bioterrorism agent.

The sludge came from Augusta, Atlanta, and, in addition to thallium, tested high for arsenic (at twice the allowable standard) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) (at 2,500 times the EPA standard).

As food-producing acres start to resemble pollution sites registered on the National Priorities List, EPA and USDA must see the irreparable harm of this easily avoidable pollution of our fields and food.

Source: Associated Press

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise." -- A Sand County Almanac

You probably didn't realize that March is Aldo Leopold month, did you now? Well, it is and some people are giving the famous conservationist a well-deserved tribute. Cities across the U.S. including those in states such as Wisconsin, Iowa, Arkansas, Georgia and New Mexico are all hosting Aldo Leopold weekends in which citizens take turns reading Leopold's most famous work, A Sand County Almanac, in full.

A Sand County Almanac is a landmark work which created a new science that intertwined forestry, agriculture, biology, zoology, ecology, education and communication. Leopold made huge strides when it came to coupling environmentalism with cultivation. In 1934 he found an abandoned farm on the Wisconsin River and revived it as a conservation getaway.

In 1937, he helped inspire the push for Wisconsin legislature to pass the Soil Conservation District Law that allowed farmers to write rules for land use themselves. Though it made little headway, agricultural stewardship continued to be part of his philosophy. Leopold is most known as the founding father of wildlife ecology, but his land ethic philosophy greatly influences agrarian ideals today.

Source: Aldo Leopold Nature Center

Potatoes were born in Peru, and they were essential to the Incan empire. Farmers grow blue, purple, yellow and brown potatoes, some as large as an orange, some as small as a walnut. But, in many ways, Peruvian farmers and their tubers have always been under siege. When Spanish conquistadors muscled their way into the region, they coerced natives to grow European crops like barley, beans and wheat. And in the process, some potato diversity was lost.

Many generations later, the modern industrial age revealed another sort of conquistador – the government, which offered Peruvian farmers a more “progressive” type of potatoes that relies on pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. But the farmers declined. Good thing, because the newest scourge for these mountainside potato villages is climate-induced blight, which can be devastating to farmers who switch to a monoculture.

In the past 40 years, farmers have seen the Andean mountains warm so much that glaciers are disappearing permanently. The new climate has encouraged plant disease and, in particular, “Late Blight” which caused the Irish Potato famine of the1800s. Farmers have moved up into the mountains seeking the right potato environment. Some farmers are experimenting with crops to find out which potatoes can handle the new climate trend. Many Andean villages keep large collections of seeds, and there's a potato gene bank in Lima that has socked away thousands of varieties.

Source: NPR

For years now, the U.S. has experienced organic milk shortages.

In fact, certified organic milk – derived from cows fed a strictly organic diet and not administered artificial hormones or antibiotics – continues to be one of the fastest growing food products in the organic industry, growing about 20 percent or more each year. But with rising feed costs and less incentive to transition conventional herds to organic, the price of organic milk will steadily increase – and demand may not be met.

USDA reports that farmers received more than $19 per counterweight last month for conventional milk. Compared to a year ago, when farmers received just more than $13, that's pretty good. Higher conventional milk prices, however, mean fewer farmers are inclined to transition their conventional herds to organic.

Yet, in a volatile market, and as more dairies struggle to stay in the business, transitioning to organic is an excellent way to ensure a premium price for their products on into the future.

Currently, there simply aren't enough certified organic cows in the U.S., and some companies, like Stonyfield, now import organic milk from abroad.

A mysterious illness called white nose syndrome is plaguing bat populations in the Northeast, and scientists predict fatalities might reach the hundreds of thousands this winter.

This is a tragedy, to be sure -- for all who eat. Bats are the most important nocturnal crop pest predators, taking over the insect and beetle feeding that birds accomplish by day, eating up to their own body weight in bugs.

New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts alone have more than 9 million acres of farmland. Farmers fear the kind of damage that some crop producers have experienced due to colony collapse disorder in bees. The unexplained and sudden lack of pollinators has cost the agriculture industry approximately $8 to $12 billion.

Experts agree that losing a significant number of bats will affect farmers of all kinds – from grain growers to orchardists.

And while scientists are unsure if the white fungus that forms around bats' noses is the cause of the life-threatening syndrome or merely a symptom of another viral or bacterial disease, they know that bats' immune symptoms are compromised and depleting fat reserves. As a consequence, bats are exiting their caves during hibernation to seek food.