It’s clear that massive subsidies that favor Archer Daniels Midland and the food processing oligopoly are bad, and corn ethanol subsidies are double-plus bad. It’s not clear to me yet what a good policy would be.

When there are obvious things to advocate for, it’s not clear where to go to support those things, or who the allies are. The political landscape seems tough — both Republicans and Democrats are influenced by the ADM lobby.

There was a strong outpouring of activism around the last round of organic standards, and that battle was organic vs. agribusiness. But the interest of the agro-oligopoly in maintaining its huge subsidies is stronger even than its desire to enter the double-digit organic market.

Not sure what the answers are.

Wad — I thought about journalism for a while — I was in the “Media Fellows” program in undergrad — until I decided to bail and just graduate early instead.

I’ve been a bit scared of raw milk — for which I think are legitimate reasons. Still, we have people selling the stuff at the SM farmers’ market every week, and they seem v. healthy. Still haven’t tried it, but I get an earful from raw milk proponents once in a while (I’m a bit lactose intolerant, and the proponents say that if I drank raw milk, the intolerance would go away).

My major was journalism with a minor in political science. The milk paper was for one of my California politics classes to fulfill my minor.

As for the latter question, those notices probably came about because of a lawsuit. There is no appreciable nutritional benefit of organic food versus non-organics, and the statement was part of a settlement.

However, some farmers markets (Hollywood, for sure) have been selling “raw” (non-Pasteurized) milk. These have a high risk of illness due to milk-borne microbes, though.

http://www.mulchblog.com/