On August 3, 1913, the Wheatland Riot took place in California, leading to four deaths, including two workers and two law enforcement agents. A burst of violence caused by the police busting up a hopworkers strike, the event led to reforms for farmworkers and calls for increased state authority both to regulate working conditions and […]
Tag: agriculture
In just about the only good thing for progressives in this year’s horror film of state legislation, all 11 ag-gag bills were defeated. Attempts by agribusiness to criminalize anyone taking foota
Modern Farmer with a long look at a major problem with the Greek yogurt industry–endless amounts of very gross whey that is quite toxic to riparian ecosystems. New York produced 150 million gall
House Republicans are moving forward in their ultimate goal of entrenching poverty, passing a farm bill that slashes food stamps. Steve King talks of food stamps that “expand the dependency class,” words that could have come out of the mouth of any bog standard Gilded Age Republican in opposition to ending the 14 hour day, […]
Tom Philpott reports on a new job safety hazard developing in agriculture. The enormous manure piles on today’s gargantuan hog farms are gurgling up explosive foam. This never really happened be
Pretty big environmental and agricultural news out of Tennessee. Governor Bill Haslam, who is generally terrible on everything, has vetoed a so-called “ag-gag” bill, which would have crimi
Turns out that if you industrialize an animal and then expose them to tremendous amounts of chemical pesticides, terrible things can happen. I know that the Green Revolution and our faith in technology has worked in the short term to feed a lot of people. But without some pretty significant changes, the most important link […]
The labor historian Cindy Hahamovitch on the already terrible agricultural guestworker program that agricultural interests want to deregulate even more in a new immigration bill. The guestworker progr
So I found this Doug Fine piece on keeping cannabis production out of corporate hands a little frustrating. Fine’s basic argument is that with the increased likelihood of legalized marijuana pro
I was going to respond to that ridiculous “God Made a Farmer” Chrysler ad that ran during the Super Bowl using the voiceover of Paul Harvey’s speech of that title as narration. Showing a lot of white people (and one black person!) farming, the ad was a million ways of problems. Between ignoring the actual […]
The fact that milk prices could go up as high as $8 a gallon because of a Truman-era policy that kicks in without a new farm bill is exhibit #113421 that we need a serious reexamination of our entire
Exhibit A: The rise of 8-legged frogs. These happen at the end of a long ecological chain that begins with farm runoff from our heavily fertilized agricultural landscapes. Exhibit B: Farm towns in Cal