It regulates agricultural subsidies, food stamps, school lunch programs, rural conservation, and much more. Given the heavy impact this set of laws has on our daily lives, more and more people are asserting the need for public participation in crafting the legislation.

Like all entrepreneurs, though, the farmer has a bottom line to maintain and a tendency to view government regulation as a barrier to progress and profit. And, who would blame them?

Blue Hill is one of a handful of small Maine towns that have been taking bold steps to protect their local food system. In 2011, they passed an ordinance exempting their local farmers and food producers from federal and state licensure requirements when these farmers sell directly to customers.

So-called "ag-gag" bills that criminalize undercover filming on farms and at slaughterhouses to document criminal animal abuse are sweeping the countr...

It seems an irresistibly good deal, our 99¢ soda or $1.50 loaf of bread. But these prices represent just a fraction of the true costs of getting that soda and bread into our shopping bags. We pay for the hidden costs of the corporate food supply chain in multiple ways, not all of them financially.

Few humans on earth fully grasp the scale and scope of America's dystopian industrial food production systems anymore, much less how those mega-systems are bleeding over to the rest of the world and changing not only what and how we eat, but how we think about food.

Hurricane Sandy, 2012 Climate Change Poster Child, was likely influenced by continuing climate change in 3 ways.

North America Has Largest Increase in Human-Driven Climate Change Catastrophes of all the continents, say insurers, and it'll get worse, according to a major new study, reports Joe Romm at Climate Progress.

Every day is Earth Day, folks.

This past summer showed how under climate change, the resulting droughts could rob fracking operations of water, an essential ingredient needed to harvest oil and gas from shale deposits, reports Michael Klare at Tomdispatch.

If an ER for calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys and goats seems extreme to you, you may be more out of touch with your food than you think.