CHURCHVILLE, VA—My wife is complaining about our increased costs at the supermarket. I remind her that every pound of meat, milk, and butter we buy requires several pounds of corn to produce—and biofuel mandates have shoved the corn price up from about $ 2 per bushel to $3.60. Many hog producers, dairymen, and egg farms [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued new report that attempts to forecast the impact of climate change on American farming in the next 50 years. USDA seems to expect serious climate-related farming problems ahead, but the recent changes in global climate have been tiny—and in the “wrong” direction! The earth’s temperatures are now [...]
The Environmental Protection Agency, in a George Orwellian move, has just announced that it has suddenly decided to put the herbicide atrazine through yet another regulatory wringer, despite having just completed a comprehensive, multi-year regulatory review of the safety of atrazine begun in 1994. Only three months ago the EPA announced that after reviewing hundreds [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—“Environmentalists are standing in the way of feeding humanity through their opposition to biotechnology, farm chemicals and nitrogen fertilizer”—straight talk from billionaire Bill Gates at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines October 15th
Gates could have said with equal truth that the same environmentalists, by demanding organic-only farming, are risking the future [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—Rudolph Steiner, a founder of organic farming in the 1920s, started the “great organic nitrogen swindle” that threatens the world with hunger to this day. Steiner didn’t believe in nutrients, he believed in “vital forces.” He said a cow has horns to send into itself “astral-ethereal formative powers.” He claimed you could fertilize a [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—I learned last week how to live longer.
Four of us had wrangled through 90 minutes of public debate in New York City about food regulation. In a forum sponsored by the Smith Family Foundation, we were essentially arguing about organic versus conventional farming.
Michael Hansen of Consumers Union continued his decades-long contention that farm [...]
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The great river valleys have always been the key cradles of civilization, and the great river valleys may always be at the heart of human societies. The great river valleys had the world’s richest hunting grounds. They gave birth to the world’s first farms and then to the cities that produced the doctors [...]
Alex A. Avery
Speech to the National Potato Promotion Board, Denver, Colorado
The Rev. Thomas Malthus’ famous question about whether humanity can continue to feed all the people was posed exactly 200 years ago.
It has taken us nearly all of that 200 years to be sure of an affirmative answer. Only recently have we been certain [...]
