Alan Goldberg, Ph.D., is a former commissioner of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and is a guest blogger today for Livable Future.
The largest pork producer in the world, Smithfield Foods Inc., says it can’t afford to go through with one of its much-ballyhooed animal welfare improvement plans. The company said that [...]

Aaron French’s commentary yesterday on the Civil Eat’s blog raises this issue of how prepared the sustainable food movement is to take its seat at the table in Washington. An important question given the receptivity the current administration has shown of late. It seems some more organizing is necessary. Case-in-point: a statement from Obama, as [...]

I was privileged to spend the past few days at the Inaugural Meeting of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a well-organized group of stakeholders from around the country ranging from farmers to policy wonks (who are sometimes one in the same) working in coalition on important issues. In addition to learning an incredible amount [...]

At the 9th annual Dodge Lecture yesterday at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (video will be posted on CLF’s website soon), world renowned scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva stated that the most important issues in sustainable agriculture today are the disappearance of nutrition in food (a major public health concern) and localization of [...]

In mid-January, Future Harvest - A Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, held its 10th annual conference. More than 200 people gathered to learn about sustainable agriculture practices, and how to get more local, sustainable foods into groceries, schools, hospitals and even farmers markets (thanks to keynote speaker Nina Planck). This year’s attendance was evidence of the [...]

Here’s an issue we don’t pay enough attention to: providing affordable health care for farmers. Steph Larsen, Rural Policy Organizer for the Center for Rural Affairs, discusses this in yesterday’s edition the The Ethicurean blog. “When we talk about local food, it means more than just proximity to a farm,” she writes. “We associate supporting ‘local [...]