Side effects: Fuel demand crash shuts U.S. ethanol plants, meatpackers lack refrigerant Stephanie Kelly, Tom Polansek NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) – A slew of U.S. ethanol plants have shut down as fuel demand has collapsed during the coronavirus outbreak, and meatpackers have been hit by a worrying side-effect: less carbon dioxide is now available to chill…
If you imagine that a local business making surgical face masks is working 24/7, guess again An owner at the North Texas plant is frustrated that his dire warnings went unheeded. Mike Bowen runs America’s No. 1 maker of hospital surgical masks, in North Richland Hills. For more than a decade, he predicted a pandemic…
Food Freedom New Wyoming Law Lets Local Ranchers Sell Cuts of Meat Directly to Consumers Wyoming’s first-and-best-in-the-nation food freedom law just keeps getting better. Baylen Linnekin | 4.4.2020 8:30 AM (Sergio Pitamitz/robertharding/Newscom) Wyoming’s groundbreaking Food Freedom Act has served as a national model for how states can deregulate many in-state food sales. The five-year-old law…
“THE FLU PUT THE BAN ON UNION MEETINGS” By Tom Giessel At first glance, one might suspect the title of this article to be a directive by Kansas Farmers Union president Donn Teske, or National Farmers Union president Rob Larew of a temporary halt to all Farmers Union gatherings. As a matter of fact, the…
Comparative Resilience: 8 Principles for Post-COVID Reconstruction This past weekend, a bright Georgetown undergraduate asked me how I squared my passion for localization with the theory of comparative advantage. For economics newbies, he was referring to David Ricardo’s argument that every community should find one product to specialize in and trade for everything else. I…
Iowa JBS workers tell advocates they’re packed in too tight to stay safe from coronavirus Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register Published 5:53 p.m. CT March 31, 2020 A Latino advocacy group is questioning whether meatpacking giant JBS is doing enough to protect the 2,700 workers at its Marshalltown pork processing plant, saying employees are crowded…
INTERVIEW by C.J. Polychroniou, of World-renowned dissident and philosopher Noam Chomsky Truthout April 1, 2020 Chomsky: Ventilator Shortage Exposes the Cruelty of Neoliberal Capitalism But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary socioeconomic…
U.S. senators scrutinize meat packers’ big profits during pandemic Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. senators are calling for investigations of record profit margins for beef processors like Tyson Foods (TSN.N) and Cargill, after ranchers complained surging meat prices due to coronavirus hoarding did not translate into higher cattle prices. FILE PHOTO: A shopper picks…
by Marion Nestle Mar 31 2020 What does $2 Trillion do for US Food Systems? (Not much, alas) President Trump’s $2 Trillion relief package is the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020.’’ This 880-page (!) bill addresses food systems in several ways, most of them in “Title I Agricultural Programs” which…