Subject: Agriculture Sector

• A Trip to Green Dirt Farm

  July 29, 2008

• Studies In Crap: Say It In Chinese and The Bicentennial Beef Cookbook

  August 7, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Tuesday 8/26

  August 26, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Wednesday, 11/26

  By OWEN MORRISThe word salary is derived from salt. One of the many things I did not know and learned from this article devoted to the world's greatest spice. [Portfolio]Not a good year to be a pecan farmer. In Texas, farmers are having to rely on last year's crop to meet demand and in Oklahoma, the state is trying to receive federal relief for its pecan farmers. [Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News]This article explains why there is never a shortage of turkeys on Thanksgiving. Still leave

  November 26, 2008

• Kansas in the Rose Parade: Same ol' Wizard of Oz crap

  Kansans looking for home state props during tomorrow's Tournament of Roses parade can thank Bayer CropScience, a massive ag science company, for once again reminding millions of viewers worldwide that Kansas will never, ever be rid of The Wizard of Oz. Bayer CropScience, which is part of the Bayer global health, science and technology conglomerate, has a Manufacturing, Research and Development plant on Hawthorne Road in Kansas City, Missouri, and a Research and Development facility in Stilwell,

  December 31, 2008

• Best Downtown Revitalization Project

  October 17, 2002

• To Hell With Cookies

  April 29, 2004

• The latest victim of the economy? A reasonable discussion about pork

  The 2009 Responsible Pork Symposium was supposed to be in Kansas City this week. Then everyone lost their money and ruined it.This year's summit was canceled because everyone's completely broke, the Responsible Pork Web site says. That includes pork producers who probably can't afford a plane ticket and stay, even if a room at the Airport Hilton comes at a group rate. Looking at the schedule of speakers, this might've been an interesting discussion. Presenters were supposed to discuss how re

  February 25, 2009

• Oysters and mussels and clams oh my! Do you know which are sustainable seafood?

  Flickr: Ricky DavidWhen you think "food in Kansas City," chances are seafood doesn't come in the top 10. Maybe not even the top 100. Yet it's on menus all over the city.But before you bite into that succulence from the sea, you should know whether what you're eating is sustainable or not. Overfishing is such a problem that a report by top scientists concluded that if fishing stays at its current levels, "there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century." To

  March 20, 2009

• Get to know your food and farmer. Eat Local Expo tomorrow

  Flickr: Kater WThe Eat Local Expo -- as the name implies -- is a gathering of people devoted to local food. More importantly, it's a marketplace where consumers can meet local farmers and start the beginnings of a new food relationship. The first of two expos, which are sponsored by the Kansas City Food Circle (KCFC), is tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Shawnee Civic Center. I called KCFC Coordinating Committee Member Dave Lawrence, who was kind enough to talk while he unloaded copies of KC

  March 27, 2009

• Cob Smacked

  October 12, 2006

• Martina McBride

  April 12, 2007

• Pistachio recall expands (plus conspiracy theory)

  Flickr: Molly AliThe two million pounds of pistachios recalled last week weren't enough. Now that number has doubled. California-based Setton can't rule out the possibility of salmonella in its entire 2008 crop, so it's recalling all roasted pistachios and raw shelled ones. Previously only in-shell roasted ones were recalled. (Got that straight?)The FDA's Web site keeps adding recalled "pistachio-containing products." When this ordeal was announced last week, only seven products were listed; now

  April 8, 2009

• Consumers Union, 29 groups ask Sebelius to veto hormone milk bill

  Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports and Consumerist, has sent a long letter to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius regarding Kansas House Bill 2121. Twenty-nine groups involved in agricultural and food production added their signatures to a copy and sent it as well. Flickr: LauraThe letters have to do with milk labeling. HB 2121 would require producers who say their cows were not treated with rBGT, rBST or other hormones to add this disclaimer: "The Food and Drug Administration has deter

  April 14, 2009

• Urban Pollination

  October 23, 2008

• Thelma Tribute

  August 28, 2008

• For the makers of Shatto Milk, success is cold and tasty

  September 18, 2008

• Farmers on Display

  March 27, 2008

• What You Eat

  February 14, 2008

• Away From Home

  October 25, 2007

• Sloppy Seconds

  Pig Farm produces some good swill, but not enough.

  August 30, 2007

• Local Booger

  June 21, 2007

• Cattle Call

  March 2, 2006

• Oh, Sweet!

  Roger McNeill and Susan Macdonald Bray mind their beeswax.

  April 11, 2002

• Pig Out

  Merriam's Seaboard Corporation thought it could really bring home the bacon -- if it could just find a place to process its hogs.

  September 7, 2000

• Please don't disappear, tuna

  Flickr: Giant GinkgoLike cows or chickens, tuna seems like something that'll always be around. Tuna sandwich for lunch, sashimi for dinner. That could change drastically in the next five years. Two of the three species of bluefin tuna make up a large portion of the tuna we eat (other species include albacore, yellowfin and bigeye), and it's being fished at unsustainable levels. Last week, the World Wildlife Foundation announced that Atlantic bluefin tuna could be completely wiped out by 20

  April 20, 2009

• Charlie Arnot and big agriculture featured in this week's The Pitch

  Mr. ArnotMake sure to pick up a copy of The Pitch this week for the feature story on meat consultant Charlie Arnot. In Peter Rugg's article, Arnot comes off as a Karl Rove for carnivores for his work in, among other places, Arizona:Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Humane Society of the United States, says Arnot was hired as a consultant by the "No on 204" campaign. "It was all the big agribusiness companies putting money into the group called the Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers. Th

  April 29, 2009

• As Big Ag’s grade-A meat promoter, Charlie Arnot cooks up opposition to industry reform

  April 30, 2009

• Bees make the best brake lights

  A swarm of bees latched on to the back of a car on top of a parking garage on the Country Club Plaza, and Fox 4 was there to capture the bizarre video. Sounds like the woman didn't mind having a colony of bees attached to the rear of her car and drove away. 

  May 27, 2009

• A very real Midwest terror: Ug99

  There's a reason why Kansas is called the bread basket of America. It's the top-wheat producing state -- nearly double the total of runner-up North Dakota -- in the top-producing wheat country in the world. The Kansas Wheat Commission estimates that the annual wheat crop "pumps some $2.5 billion into the Kansas economy."But scientists fear that if the fungus called Ug99 ever reaches the Midwest, it would wipe out 80 percent -- or all of -- the crop, ending not only Kansas agriculture as we know

  June 15, 2009

• How to Eat Local in KC

  June 18, 2009

• It's blueberry picking time

  Fresh local blueberries are finally here. The Berry Patch opened for the season on Saturday. The farm bills itself as Missouri's largest blueberry grower, with more than 20 acres of fine picking about 20 minutes south of the city in Cleveland, Missouri (22509 S State Line Road, reachable either by Holmes or U.S. 69 Highway).The farm's owners, the Willis Family, keep a detailed list of picking conditions on the Berry Patch's Web site and will provide even more information if you call the picking

  June 17, 2009

• Cow producing too much milk? Better kill it

  People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to, and the price has fallen. Yet, there are more dairy cows than ever, all eating feed -- and the price of that keeps rising. The result is that $10 of milk can cost $17 to produce. As Bloomberg News writes,In California, the largest milk-producing state, dairies lost $1.07 per 100 pounds in April, compared with profits of $11.23 in July 2007, based on feed costs and milk prices, USDA data show. In January, the state was the most unprofitable in

  June 23, 2009

• FDA recall your pistachios? No problem -- just repackage them and sell them again

  Setton Pistachio was the second-largest pistachio producer in the U.S. when, in the beginning of April, it had to issue a "voluntary" recall of its entire 2008 crop of roasted shelled pistachios and roasted in-shell pistachios.The company was caught off-guard, with one of its chief officers admitting that, before the recall, they hadn't known salmonella was in raw pistachios. Still, Setton insisted that the recall represented a brief bump and that no bad pistachios reached the public,When all of

  June 25, 2009

• Lemon Tree

  June 18, 2009

• Got milk money?

  Forget spilled milk -- dairy farmers seem ready to spill blood. They're seeing red because of declining raw milk prices, the result of a decrease in worldwide demand and a glut of milk production that was ramped up in expectation of greater demand that never materialized. Some groups are seeking legislative redress, while others feel that financial subsidies are the only way to keep dairy farms in operations. Farmers donned cowsuits to protest a recent hearing by the Department of Agriculture an

  July 21, 2009

• Eat Your Lawn

  August 6, 2009

• Shatner's moved on from saving the whales

  ​William Shatner was once tasked with going back in time to rescue a humpback whale -- albeit to save the planet because those whales could communicate with a hostile alien race hellbent on destroying Earth. It's not like he would later tie global warming into a public service announcement for the Sierra Club to save the whales that live off screen. Wait a minute...  Now, only 23 years after filming Star Trek IV, he's got a new idea on how to save the planet and the challenge seems signif

  August 10, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Tuesday, September 8

  A tutorial on how to brew wheat: Boulevard starred on a segment of the Discovery Channel's How Stuff Works. [Boulevard Brewing Blog]A review of Dortmunder Gold -- a golden lager that'll make you want to get in the car and get to Cleveland, Ohio as fast as possible. [The Liquid Diet]Forget those cheese-filled chocolate Easter eggs. Cadbury PLC has rejected a $16.7 billion offer from Kraft Foods. [Dow Jones Newswires]Good Natured Family Farms -- a co-operative of 150 local family farms -- is seek

  September 8, 2009

• Even the fish are juiced

  ​Fishing seems difficult enough without the potential of coming upon fish that have been genetically engineered. And now Wired has the story of how fisherman are caught in a debate over whether a record-setting catch of a genetically engineered fish should really count. Earlier this month, Saskatchewan fisherman Sean Konrad snared a 48-pound, world-record rainbow trout in Lake Diefenbaker, which is apparently filled with oversized trout that escaped from a nearby fish farm nine years ago. Alt

  September 17, 2009

• A steak with a side of antibiotics, please

  ​As the health care debate rages across the country, a different kind of health issue is cropping up with livestock: the widespread use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic uses such as growth and disease prevention. And the possibility that it's rendering those antibiotics less effective for people. Washington Post writer Ezra Klein makes the point that we are encouraging the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by eating animals that contain low doses of antibiotics. His argument is ba

  September 18, 2009

• We'll still have scallops during the apocalypse

  ​Chalk up one food win for global warming -- it's apparently producing large and abundant scallops off the coast of Britain. A study published in Marine Biology noted an increase in the great scallop Pecten maximus over the course of 20 years of research by scientists at Bangor University and the University of York and Liverpool in England.  "It's great to provide some good news about one of our fisheries for a change. However, scallop fisheries are difficult to manage and have a history

  October 13, 2009

• Subsidies the answer to overfishing?

  ​Amid discussions of sustainable fisheries and concerns about overfishing, Southern Fried Science asks whether the government should be providing subsidies to fisherman?Supporting the concept is the precedent set by government subsidies for farmers, which ensures an employed workforce, puts limits on yields and production and restricts the amount of a given staple that can enter the marketplace. On the other side lies the free market argument, which suggests that fishing has always experience

  October 14, 2009

• What's Puck-o-lating in the world of coffee

  ​Just as he has done with pizza and airline food, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is hoping to change the iced coffee market. Nation's Restaurant News reports that Puck will be rolling out a line of bottled iced coffee drinks along the line of Starbucks' Frapuccinos. The Wolfgang Puck Culinary Iced Coffees will come in four flavors: Vanilla Fusion, Double Blend Mocha, Creme Caramel and Cafe Au Lait. A single bottle of the packaged coffee drink will cost $2.39, a four-pack $7.99."The coffees selec

  October 15, 2009