Current Stories
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Portland leaders OK urban expansion, farm protections
Oregonian
02/09/2010
Metro and the three Portland-area counties rolled the dice on a collaborative future Monday, approving a long-range planning map that designates which areas will be developed and which will be reserved for farms and forests for the next 40 to 50 years.
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Urban farmers fight to sow green biz
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
02/05/2010
Urban farmers are challenging city halls across the US to rewrite ordinances that govern residential gardens. They believe feeding their fellow urbanites homegrown tomatoes, fresh eggs, and sweet corn will change the world one backyard at a time.
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Oregon business wary of BPA ban in baby bottles
Oregonian
02/04/2010
The Oregon Legislature is looking to follow in the footsteps of Walmart and other retailers who are backing away from baby bottles and sippy cups with the potential endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A.
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USDA tightens school lunch safety
USA Today
02/05/2010
The US Department of Agriculture announced sweeping steps Thursday to "assure the safety and quality of food" purchased for the National School Lunch Program.
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Portland ready to test recycling kitchen scraps
Oregonian
02/03/2010
After five years of delays, Portland is ready to try out collecting food waste from residents at curbside for recycling into compost, addressing the biggest glob left in the city's garbage.
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Obama boosts biofuels, "clean coal"
KPLU
02/04/2010
The Obama administration announced new plans to boost biofuels and to look for climate-friendly ways to use coal as part of an overall "green energy" strategy. Industry folks in the Northwest are enthusiastic, but environmentalists are a bit more cautious.
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EPA leader hears concerns over birth defects
San Francisco Chronicle
02/04/2010
It was the day the families of this rural California farm community had long awaited. After nearly two years of pleading for someone to listen to their concerns about an abnormally high number of birth defects, they got one of the biggest ears in the West on Wednesday.
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President calls for support of alternative fuels
New York Times
02/03/2010
President Obama moved on Wednesday to bolster the nation's production of corn-based ethanol and other alternative liquid fuels and ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal.
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FoodHub links NW fresh food buyers with producers
Oregonian
02/03/2010
Portlanders love their food and their farmers, and Ann Wright sees it as more than a passing crush.
From her viewpoint - she's deputy undersecretary for marketing with the US Department of Agriculture - the metro area's embrace of locally grown food is an element of economic recovery.
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WWU audits its waste
Bellingham Herald
02/03/2010
How much of what ends up in waste bins at Western Washington University's dorms is actually garbage?
That's what some environmentally minded students are trying to answer.
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Feeding the food gardening trend
Crosscut
02/03/2010
The urge to grow plants, especially ones that feed us, can be charted back to ancient peoples recording their efforts on cave walls, and yet it's annually new - visible in the delight of a child making daily visits to the garden to discover the first pea vines poking up through the cold soil. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, to see increasing numbers of urban people turning back to growing edible gardens as a way to reconnect with their roots.
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Salmon and farming again trying to coexist
Coos Bay World
02/03/2010
Scientists and policy makers gathering in Southern Oregon this week will look for ways to restore the ecology of the Klamath Basin so both salmon and farming can thrive.
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Views: Oregon's beacons of achievement
Oregonian
01/31/2010
From a streetcar that other cities envy to locavores to community service, the Oregonian highlights nine homegrown success stories that make Oregon a better place to live, work and play.
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Sea-crop has farmers testing the water
Aberdeen Daily World
01/31/2010
Ask Robert Zeigler about the secret to Sea-Crop - a plant supplement extracted from seawater off Washington that makes orchids bloom and pear trees bear fruit like crazy - and the businessman gives a sheepish grin. “I don’t know why this stuff works,” he said. “Seawater is a brave new frontier,” Zeigler added. “No one knows what’s in it.”
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In Portland, going green and growing vertical
New York Times
01/31/2010
Urban gardening used to seem subversive: people planted tomatoes in public parks and strung their hops to rooftops to make homebrew. Yet here in one of the more thoroughly tilled cities in America, subversive has come full circle: the federal government plans to plant its own vertical garden that changes with the seasons and nurtures plants that yield energy savings.
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WA seeks limited ban on bisphenol A
Seattle Times
01/29/2010
Perhaps as early as Friday, the Washington state Senate is expected to vote on whether to fine manufacturers and retailers that make or sell baby bottles, sippy cups, and cans or jars of infant food that contain the chemical bisphenol A because of health concerns for young children.
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Grape growing, fish protection clash in California
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
01/29/2010
Grape growers in Northern California's Sonoma wine region are stomping mad at a new plan to limit the amount of water vineyards can pump from local rivers and streams to protect crops from frost -- a proposed regulation meant to safeguard coho salmon on the brink of local extinction.
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Washington wine industry continues growth
Tri-City Herald
01/29/2010
Washington's wine industry continues to grow at record levels. Last fall, wineries crushed 165,000 tons of grapes, up 14 percent from 2008's record of 145,000 tons.
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Investigating mystery of deadly shellfish poisoning
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
01/29/2010
Research five years ago showed that Vashon Island's Quartermaster Harbor hosts the highest concentration in all of Puget Sound of an alga that causes deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning . A UW oceanographer is determined to find out why.
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EPA probes town with toxic-waste dump
Los Angeles Times
01/29/2010
The US EPA has launched an internal investigation into its permitting and oversight in a San Joaquin Valley farming community dominated by a hazardous-waste facility, agricultural pesticide spraying, and truck exhaust that may be contributing to health problems including severe birth defects.
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BC fish farming expansion frozen
CBC BC
01/27/2010
Fish farming on the West Coast won't be allowed to expand until at least December, following a BC Supreme Court decision to give the federal government more time to take over the job of regulating the industry from the province.
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WA's farmers to get millions for marketing
Olympian
01/27/2010
Washington state farmers and growers will get nearly $20 million to promote overseas sales, the Agriculture Department announced Tuesday, even as the White House made plans to announce a federal spending freeze that could affect future funding for the program.
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Raw milk proponents get court victory
BC Local News
01/27/2010
Members of a controversial raw milk co-op hope an Ontario court ruling will force BC health officials to stop trying to stamp out their use of unpasteurized dairy products.
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In vitro meat's evolution
Los Angeles Times
01/27/2010
With the meat industry's demands on the environment multiplying, proponents of "in vitro" meat say we're getting closer to creating a processed product that will have significantly less impact.
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Hunger problem returns to Oregon
Oregon Public Broadcasting
01/28/2010
Oregon is now the second hungriest state, according to the USDA. It's not that Oregon doesn't grow enough to feed its people. Rather the problem lies with getting food to people who need it in a way they can afford.
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