Agriculture

Rare corporate courage and common sense

Good for Wal-Mart! Despite intense pressure by anti-biotechnology activists, the retailing giant didn’t cave in to demands that it “reject” Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) sweet corn (maize).

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Paul Driessen

|2013-05-25T20:57:16-04:00May 22nd, 2012|Comments Off

The folly of E15 anti-hydrocarbon policies

The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading [...]

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Paul Driessen

|2012-04-24T00:00:00-04:00April 24th, 2012|Comments Off

Legal challenge to EPAâ€™s E15 scheme picks up steam

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plans to allow a controversial blend of gasoline and ethanol to be sold in the U.S. could be headed for rough legal sledding.Federal appeals court judges recently heard a challenge to the Obama EPA’s approval of E15, a blend of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol, to be sold in cars from the model year 2001 and newer. EPA claims it has the power under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to grant waivers allowing the sale of the new blend in certain vehicles. Currently, ethanol is not allowed to comprise more than 10 percent of [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2012-04-23T12:09:58-04:00April 23rd, 2012|Comments Off

Sustainable development: latest tool for expanding EPA’s empire

Determined to concentrate power in the hands of largely unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, Obama administration officials have devised a new scheme to justify expanding the regulatory reach of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2013-10-17T09:44:07-04:00February 27th, 2012|2 Comments

Deep Green Resistance: Occupy (and more) till civilization falls

By Duggan Flanakin (reviewer)The central theme of Deep Green Resistance, written by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen (author of Endgame), is simple. To save the planet, its wildlife and some of its people, the enlightened few must rise up in resistance – not to reform, but rather to totally tear down the corporate capitalist economic system, and even civilization itself as we know it. Jensen presents his thesis in the book's preface. "The dominant culture – civilization – is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to [...]

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CFACT Ed

|2012-09-16T22:32:44-04:00December 27th, 2011|Comments Off

Time to Rethink America’s Cellulosic Ethanol Industrial Policy

If ever there were a case study in the absurdity of industrial policy, the federal mandates for cellulosic ethanol should be exhibit number one.

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Dave Juday

|2014-04-08T17:32:01-04:00December 16th, 2011|Comments Off

Organic cucumbers (Sprouts?) kill 14 in Germany

An outbreak of E-coli contamination in organic cucumbers has sickened 1,200 people and killed 14. Scores of victims have lost all kidney function as a result of the infection with many forced to use dialysis. Green campaigners routinely attack fruits and vegetables grown and protected using efficient modern methods. No evidence exists that "organic" foods offer any nutritional benefits over foods produced by modern farming. There were certainly no health benefits for the victims of this tragic outbreak. To learn more about The Truth About Organic Foods, CFACT recommends Alex Avery's book by that title. CFACT Europe produced a translation of [...]

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|2012-09-19T22:54:36-04:00June 6th, 2011|Comments Off

Dusting off the alarmist pollen from biotech debate

Always trying to come up with new ways to stop the progress of safe, genetically modified foods, some environmentalists are now claiming that the pollen from such plants will “pollute” nearby organic fields. But according to expert Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, traces of biotech pollen have practically no effect whatsoever on nearby crops, and esteemed bodies like the National Academy of Sciences and British Royal Society all say there is no basis for regulating gene-spliced crops any differently from other crops. Since GM foods are already helping to conserve land, reduce chemical use, cut down on erosion, [...]

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|2011-04-14T00:00:00-04:00April 14th, 2011|Comments Off

End the ethanol subsidies

What am I missing? There must be some aspect of our insane energy policies that I fail to appreciate. “We the People” just booted a boatload of spendthrifts out of Congress, after they helped engineer a $1.3 trillion deficit on America’s FY-2010 budget and balloon our cumulative national debt to $13.7 trillion.The “bipartisan White House deficit reduction panel” chimed in with a 50-page draft proposal, offering suggestions for $3.8 trillion in future budgetary savings. The proposal targets $100 billion in Defense Department weapons programs, healthcare benefits and overseas bases. It also proposes a $13-billion cutback in the federal workforce and lining out [...]

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Paul Driessen

|2010-11-23T10:02:35-05:00November 23rd, 2010|Comments Off

Greens realize worth of nuclear energy and GM foods

The Daily Telegraph reports that green campaigners are abandoning old prejudices and embracing nuclear energy and genetically modified foods. The activists now say that by opposing nuclear power they encouraged the use of polluting coal-fired power stations, while by protesting against GM crops they prevented developing countries from benefiting from a technology that could have helped feed the hungry. READ MORE FROM DAILY TELEGRAPH

By

Adam Houser

|2012-09-19T17:12:57-04:00November 2nd, 2010|Comments Off

EPA set to crack down on farm dust

As if fickle weather and a sluggish economy weren’t enough to worry about down on the farm, America’s farmers may soon be facing a new threat to their livelihood: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).EPA’s regulatory machine is moving ever closer to imposing more stringent limitations on the amount of dust farmers will be allowed to kick up while plying their trade. Specifically, EPA is proposing a new standard for particulate matter (PM) that will be twice as stringent as the current one. The Clean Air Act requires EPA every five years to review its regulations that fall under the National [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2010-08-09T07:35:44-04:00August 9th, 2010|Comments Off

Adapting to climate change through technology

"Since when did you become a global warming alarmist?" I kidded Norman midway into our telephone conversation a few weeks before this amazing scientist and humanitarian died. "What are you talking about?" Dr. Borlaug retorted. "I've never believed that nonsense." I read a couple sentences from his July 29 Wall Street Journal article. "Within the next four decades, the world's farmers will have to double production ... on a shrinking land base and in the face of environmental demands caused by climate change. Indeed, [a recent Oxfam study concludes] that the multiple effects of climate change might reverse 50 years of work to end [...]

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Paul Driessen

|2012-09-16T22:33:26-04:00September 21st, 2009|Comments Off

Tiny fish threatens to turn Californiaâ€™s Central Valley into Dust Bowl

Consumers around the country may soon be facing steeper prices for fruits, vegetables and nuts thanks to an obscure three-inch-long fish, called the Delta smelt, and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In California’s storied Central Valley, for decades one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, an estimated 250,000 acres of prime farm land are lying fallow or dying. The parched area bears all the signs of a prolonged drought, but the acute water shortage confronting farmers and growers is largely manmade, the result of the Interior Department’s rigorous enforcement of the ESA. Responding to a lawsuit brought by the [...]

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Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

|2009-08-31T09:37:27-04:00August 31st, 2009|Comments Off

Creating the Great American Potato Famine

By Dennis T. AveryMcDonald's just agreed to pursue pesticide-free potatoes for its restaurants. The anti-technology activists pushing this organic move had better hope the company drags its feet or we risk having the first McDonald's in history with no French fries. Less than a decade ago, the Danish government's high-level Bichel technical committee concluded that an organic-only mandate would cut Danish potato production by 80 percent. As for the published claim that French fried spuds are "bathed in pesticides, give me a break. The pesticides--including the organic ones--are used on the plant's leaves, while the potatoes grow underground. There's absolutely no [...]

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|2009-04-13T00:00:00-04:00April 13th, 2009|Comments Off

Biotech could save world wheat crops

By Dennis AveryNorman Borlaug is the most decorated civilian in history -- largely because he was able to cross-breed a super-wheat that fended off the stem rust fungus, which had historically stolen one-fourth of the world's wheat crops. The fungus spores traveled worldwide on the wind, leaving poor farmers -- families with tangled masses of wheat stems that yielded little grain. Borlaug'a wheat breeding success made him "the Father of the Green Revolution." He and his fellow high-yield farming scientists saved 1 billion people from famine in the 1970s. Now 94 and ill with cancer, the Iowa native eventually won the Nobel [...]

By

Christina Norman

|2009-03-17T00:00:00-04:00March 17th, 2009|Comments Off