The agitated sandwich shop customer disliked the pickles. Now she's in one with the cops.

A Massachusetts woman who ordered a steak-and-cheese sub at a subway station was so angry about "too many pickles" on her sandwich that she punched an employee and shoved two jars of pickles at her, transit police said Monday.
FULL POST

A golden marketing and do-good opportunity for McDonald's may have lost its luster.

The fast food giant found itself at the center of big news this week in Cleveland, when Charles Ramsey freed three women and a girl who police say were held hostage for years. Ramsey became a viral video star, and in interview after interview, he told TV anchors that he had gone to McDonald's before rescuing the women and rushed to their aid carrying a "half-eaten Big Mac."
FULL POST

Chris Chinn is a family farmer in Missouri, and serves as a Face of Farming & Ranching for U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance. She previous wrote about the effects of the drought on her farm. Read more about her on her blog and follow her on Twitter @chrischinn.

On our farm, it’s normal for us to have entire groups of pigs that never have had any antibiotics when they go to market. Yes, you read that correctly. I know this is not what you see on the internet about how farmers use antibiotics. It seems everywhere you look, you can read or hear a very different story. I’m here to tell you this is a myth.

I like to explain our antibiotic use like this: our hogs do not carry health insurance and all medications are expensive. We cannot afford to use antibiotics unless absolutely necessary to improve the quality of health for our animals. And we always use antibiotics under the guidance of our veterinarian. He decides what medication will be used when necessary and what dose will be used.
FULL POST

Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of Southern food. Today's contributor, Emily Wallace, writes about food, art, and design.

The pattern is familiar: a small, circular border hatched with short, shallow lines; an interior ringed with four-leaf clovers. I craned my neck to glimpse a blueprint of one of the world’s best-known designs - that of the Oreo cookie. A copy of the line drawing for its emboss, drafted in 1952, hangs above a closet door in the Chapel Hill home of William J. Turnier.

Turnier handed me a step stool. “His name is in the lower right corner,” he told me. And I climbed up for a look at the print in an attempt to answer one of modern life’s biggest questions—one that had recently appeared as a headline on The New York Times website - “Who Made That Oreo Emboss?” The query, posed by designer Hillary Greenbaum, caught my eye, and I clicked the link in hopes to learn more. What I found near the top of the comments section was Turnier. He appeared as “Bill, Chapel Hill, NC,” and claimed that his father, William A. Turnier, was the artist.
FULL POST

Paul Shapiro is the vice president of farm animal protection at The Humane Society of the United States. Follow him on Twitter @pshapiro.

Editor's note: So-called "ag gag" bills proposed in states across the country would either require anyone who videotapes, photographs or records incidents of animal cruelty to turn over the evidence to authorities within 24-48 hours or prohibit the making of undercover videos, photographs and sound recordings on farms, depending on local legislation. Proponents say that these laws protect agriculture business. Opponents say they hinder free speech, food safety and animal and worker rights. One such law, HF 589, has already been signed into law in Iowa and makes it illegal for investigative journalists and activists to take jobs at animal facilities for the purpose of recording undercover footage.

We all saw the footage: A Rutgers basketball coach was caught on tape during a team practice hitting, kicking and cursing at his student players. The result: several firings and condemnation from the basketball world and beyond.

Now imagine that rather than condemning the abusive coach, the NCAA instead tried to pass a law criminalizing videotaping team practices.

As absurd as that is, that’s just what big players in animal agriculture are trying to do.
FULL POST

Mike Haley is a fifth generation farmer, raising corn and livestock on his Ohio family farm. Follow him on Twitter @FarmerHaley.

Editor's note: So-called "ag gag" bills proposed in states across the country would either require anyone who videotapes, photographs or records incidents of animal cruelty to turn over the evidence to authorities within 24-48 hours or prohibit the making of undercover videos, photographs and sound recordings on farms, depending on local legislation. Proponents say that these laws protect agriculture business. Opponents say they hinder free speech, food safety and animal and worker rights. One such law, HF 589, has already been signed into law in Iowa and makes it illegal for investigative journalists and activists to take jobs at animal facilities for the purpose of recording undercover footage.

Growing up on a farm, one of my biggest responsibilities was tending to the animals in our family’s care. At times livestock can be unpredictable in ways that are both amusing and frustrating, but much like a parent cares for their child, I cannot think of a moment that my top priority was not in the best interest of our animals and our land.

That is not saying that our livestock always respond in a positive manner to our practices. They are not capable of understanding how regular occurrences on the farm like vaccinations are for their benefit. I often wonder how others would respond if videos and pictures were shared out of context while I was caring for our animals.
FULL POST

Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of Southern food. Today's contributor, Emilie Dayan, writes a weekly SFA blog series called "Sustainable South" about food and the environment, nutrition, food access, food justice, agricultural issues and food politics.

Since 2000, Joe Nelson Icet has been advancing on Houston’s Northeastern front. He calls himself a guerrilla gardener. As founder and director of the Last Organic Outpost, he takes abandoned lots littered with trash and turns them into fertile land. Planted off of Emile Street, Icet engages the community in urban farming, his biggest plot in the industrial ruins of the old Comet Rice Mill. In doing so, land in Houston’s Fifth Ward is revitalized through farming.

The mission is simple:
FULL POST

Ryan Goodman is a generational rancher from Arkansas with a degree in Animal Science from Oklahoma State University. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Tennessee, studying beef cattle management. Goodman is one of many farmers using social media to bridge the gap between farmers and urban customers. Follow his story daily at AgricultureProud.com or on Twitter and Facebook.

Editor's note: So-called "ag gag" bills proposed in states across the country would either require anyone who videotapes, photographs or records incidents of animal cruelty to turn over the evidence to authorities within 24-48 hours or prohibit the making of undercover videos, photographs and sound recordings on farms, depending on local legislation. Proponents say that these laws protect agriculture business. Opponents say they hinder free speech, food safety and animal and worker rights. One such law, HF 589, has already been signed into law in Iowa and makes it illegal for investigative journalists and activists to take jobs at animal facilities for the purpose of recording undercover footage.

There are several critics of bills being passed into law at the state-level across the country. These so-called “ag gag” bills are making news in publications like the New York Times. Op-eds with headlines “Open the Slaughterhouses” bring about much support, as seen in a Times reader's response “Silencing Witnesses to Animal Abuse.“

What does the threat of undercover video mean to me as a cattle producer or as an employee of a concentrated animal feeding operation (often called a CAFO)?
FULL POST

Growing up, Fred Yoder always wanted to be a school teacher, but when his father fell ill during Yoder’s early twenties, Yoder set aside his dream of lesson plans and chalkboards to take up the family business - a 1,500-acre farm that grows corn, wheat and soybeans. A fourth-generation farmer, Yoder knew his way around a tractor but still asked his dad for advice when he first took over the daily crop duties.

“He told me, ‘The only thing I ask for from you, son, is that you leave the land in better shape than you found it,'” Yoder said.

Now, after nearly 40 years tilling the earth near Plain City, Ohio, 58-year-old Yoder has made good on his promise – so much so that he was honored this week by the White House as one of its Champions for Change, a weekly honor given out to 12 citizens for their contributions to the community.

According to the White House press release, this week’s honorees were brought to Washington D.C. because of their work in preparing their respective communities for the consequences of climate change.

"As we take action to reduce carbon pollution and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy, we must also take action to prepare for the impacts of climate change we are already seeing, including more frequent and severe extreme weather," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
FULL POST

Editor’s note: Michael Kugelman is the senior program associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and lead editor of The Global Farms Race. You can follow him @michaelkugelman. The views expressed are his own.

This week in Washington, the World Bank is hosting its annual conference on land and poverty. The Bank has identified improved land governance as this year’s theme. It’s a wise decision, given that poor land governance in developing world agricultural settings has spawned a destabilizing global trend – one fueled, in part, by financial support from the Bank itself.

In recent years, food-importing regimes from Asia and the Gulf, spooked by high food prices and lacking the land and water resources to grow crops at home, have obtained land overseas to use for agriculture. Private investors from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, recognizing the profit potential of precious agricultural land, have joined this scramble for the world’s soils. Nearly $30 billion in private capital is projected to be invested in farmland by 2015, and pension funds and asset managers have recently joined forces to attract even more capital for farmland financing.

Read the full story - The global farm grab is on - on the Fareed Zakaria GPS blog.