Three years ago, Alma Hasse walked purposely, head down, toward a red brick building. The Jerome County Courthouse held a mountain of files on the county’s dairy CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations, and Hasse wanted a look at them. She and her agricultural watchdog group, Idaho Concerned Area Residents for the Environment believed...
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It’s easy to get all Dickensian when looking at what’s happening across the agriculture landscape. As the spring growing season begins, there are plenty of examples sprouting that suggest that, in terms of food and farming, we are indeed living in the best of times and, if not the worst of times, some pretty...
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In conversations about agriculture and health, I think the issues raised in the book, Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn Mckenna, need to be front and center, especially as it relates to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and the use of antibiotics as a growth enhancer in animals. The book explains: Food animals...
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The flavor of great steak, like the flavor of fine coffee, chocolate or cabernet sauvignon is one of life’s deep, delicious and darkly subterranean flavors, a taste that can rock you to the bone like the bass line at a blues club. That’s no doubt why beef is Idaho’s No. 2 agricultural commodity (behind...
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“This was formerly the Smith’s Dairy,” says Bill Stoltzfus of the building he bought in 2007, just a block south of Buhl’s town square. “The place had been in the Smith family for 70-some years.” This modest cream-colored bottling plant and the soft-spoken man who now runs it hardly look like players in a...
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SPOKANE: The Globe and Mail had a story last week that caught my attention titled, “The Fat Cats of Agribusiness.” The article references growing concerns about large corporations muscling their way into the food chain, but observes that not much is being said among effected nations because they have become so dependent on these mega-corps....
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Hi Everyone, Here it is the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, the Year of Idaho Food. This is just an update on what’s happening as we start this campaign. History of the idea. In 2010, the Idaho Legislature passed a resolution, HCR59 IDAHO GROWN FOOD PRODUCTION – Stating the findings of...
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