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Hogs 
Tue Oct 27, 2009 at 17:53:51 PM PDT
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Mmm, bacon...
A few weeks back, while in Iowa, I visited a hog confinement. Everyone in Iowa refers to the state as "the belly of the beast" and I did not want to be spared from any part of that beast. (Although my nose began having second thoughts about going to a CAFO the night before I went.)
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Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 09:14:21 AM PDT
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When you visit Iowa, you're nearly guaranteed to see three things: corn, soy beans, and hog confinements. Those were the focus of the field trip I attended yesterday at the Community Food Security Coalition Conference To be totally blunt about it, maybe you've wondered: why are farmers so stupid that they keep growing corn and soybeans year after year? Or corn and corn year after year? And why on earth would anybody stink up their own farm with a hog confinement? And, as you may have guessed, it turns out that the farmers aren't stupid at all. Not one bit. I will explain below. There's also another great question I was asked on a recent visit to Lawrence University. In classic liberal arts professor fashion, one of the professors asked me, "Assuming the farmers are all rational, if they all plant GMOs, then wouldn't that mean that the GMOs are the best choice?" Gooood question. I'll address that below as well.
Welcome to Iowa
If you'd rather watch instead of read, you can view this video of George Naylor describing why GMOs and corporate giants win (thanks to Andrew Kang Bartlett for shooting and sharing the video).
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Mon Apr 06, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PDT
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Call me a dork, but I love checking out all of the uber-useful reports the USDA publishes. Here are a few recent ones that might be of interest:
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Tue Mar 17, 2009 at 17:30:00 PM PDT
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I'm horrified. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think anyone - no matter how carnivorous - wants their meat treated in such a cruel manner before it reaches their plate. I don't think this is a case of PETA vs. meat eaters. I think this is everyone vs. factory farms.
I'm specifically referring to the HBO special aired last night, Death on a Factory Farm. I believe it will be replayed, and you can see several clips from it here.
Below, I've included my own opinions and those of several others who wrote about Death on a Factory Farm.
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Tue Mar 10, 2009 at 18:09:32 PM PDT
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This article caught Jay's attenton: Iowans say pig odor study passes the smell test.
On Capitol Hill, a $1.7 million earmark for pig odor research in Iowa has become a big, fat joke among Republicans, a Grade A example of pork. But the people who live cheek by jowl with hog farms in the No. 1 pig-producing state aren't laughing.
They're gagging.
"You hold your breath and when it's really bad you get the taste in your mouth," said Carroll Harless, a 70-year-old retired corn-and-soybean farmer from Iowa Falls.
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