A collection of articles defining our times.
The pages contain clickable links, don't let
The titles fool you; some of the best articles
have very non-descript titles, and there are usually
more articles on the matters in the days and weeks
the links land on, so it's a sort of treasure hunt
through history, Enjoy! /\ \/
After you click on a page just scroll down to see the links.
Since the dawn of the Great Recession, Americans have been eating less meat, including pork. Meanwhile, prices of corn and soy—the main components of US livestock feed—have been high.
Lower demand, high feed costs: Basic economics tells us that US
factory farms should be cutting back, slowing down, producing less. And
that would be a good thing, because as I've written so many times
before, our style of meat production sucks up huge amounts of resources and creates vast amounts of pollution.
Yet look what's happening in Iowa, the by far the nation's leading hog-producing state. There, the Des Moines Registerreports,
there's been a boom in state-issued permits for new factory-scale hog
confinements. As the chart to the right shows, new permits fell off
dramatically in 2009, driven down by the low hog prices, but are now
charging back up.
Why would the meat industry be investing so heavily in new hog capacity if the economics aren't working out? Grist food editor Twighlight Greenaway proposes an answer: READ MORE
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