Garden of Eatin'

Philip Howard is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. His page at MSU says

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Community, Food and Agriculture, as well as a graduate course in Research Methods.

My research focuses on the ‘food system.’ The food system involves all of the steps required to produce food and get it to our plates–from farming and processing to distribution and consumption. My work is unified by three main questions:

* What changes are occurring?

* What are the impacts of these changes on communities?

* What can communities do to respond positively to these changes?

I currently have three main projects:

* characterizing consolidation in the food system, particularly in the rapidly growing organic sector

* exploring inequalities in ‘food environments’ and their potential relationships with health outcomes

* studying consumer interest in ‘ecolabels’ as a potential strategy for improving the livelihoods of small- and medium-scale farmers

I earned a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Missouri in 2002, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz until 2006.

View his page at MSU here.

I stumbled on an interesting chart done by the same man, showing the structure of the seed industry. Check this out.

Speaking from a financial standpoint, Forbes is probably right to name Monsanto as company of the year (they’re weathering the recession quite well, imagine that), but from a “we don’t want your round up and genetically modified seed” standpoint, I mentally flipped Forbes off this morning when I saw this article at the dentist office. The article opens in a new window.

Keep in mind when they talk about the farmers having a choice, they are lying. Just like Walmart runs small businesses out of every town they come to, Monsanto has nearly run small seed companies into the ground. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find old fashioned seed. Also keep in mind all their talk about crops planted with their genetically modified seed that are resistant to their own Round Up mean that those same crops are getting sprayed with Round Up and you’re eating it.

You might not care. I do. So I share what I find in an effort to give my readers the knowledge to make an informed choice.