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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

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In wealthy western breadbaskets like France and the United States, environmental groups who get donations from the $130 billion organic food industry claim it is viable everywhere else too. It's not just that they don't understand agriculture or science, though that is most of it. It is that they don't realize their modern White Savior Colonialism puts Africans at risk.

There is a reason that as Kenya has gotten better about feeding itself, none of it is using the "organic" process - that whole market is just 0.69% and is mostly people who wish they had the money for pesticides. The reasons organic food don't work outside places where food is easy to grow involve climate, poor soil, limited water, and pests and diseases that ruin crops.
Pew has announced they will no longer use 'generational labels' and instead use age cohorts. It makes sense demographically but it never made sense that anyone used them in the first place. 

When I was born, the Baby Boom was an event - a post-World War II increase in births due to soldiers returning home. But when they grew up they were reading the works of people who felt 'lost' because they hadn't been in World War II or the Depression, and dreary mopes like Kerouac and Ginsberg infected a whole lot of teenagers who wants to feel cheated too.
Unless you hate movies, you know this weekend was "Barbenheimer" - two highly regarded, very different films were on track to smash some records. And they did. "Barbie" did over $150 million while "Oppenheimer" did $80 million, a combined total unmatched for two competing opening weekends and "Oppenheimer" was the first time a movie had exceeded $50 million when another opening went past $100 million.
Espresso is a coffee extraction process where hot water is forced through finely ground coffee at a barometric pressure of nine - which means nine times the usual pressure you feel at sea level, which translates to about 130 pounds per square inch, about 400 percent of your car tires.

Some people drink it diluted with water, an Americano, or with milk, as a latte. In modern times, some people even drink it cold. If an in vitro (cell culture) study holds up, people may even drink it to help ward off Alzheimer's disease. 
With allied epidemiologists placed inside the US Environmental Protection Agency, and scientists pushed to the side, environmentalists feel like they are about to get a win when it comes to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have been common for 80 years.

And it will be a win - for the yacht payments of their lawyers. For the public, we will be no safer, we're not being harmed now, but the costs to 'clean up' a problem we don't have will be onerous. And we're all going to be harmed by that.


Environmental Working Group, the Extinction Rebellion of affordable produce, is always in a war on strawberries - unless they only contain pesticides their organic industry corporate donors use or sell.

For the scientifically literate, those with at least the intellect of 17th century peasants who understood 'the dose makes the poison', strawberries are healthy and safe. as is the rest of the EWG Dirty Dozen list that just happens to never include organic food sprayed with toxic chemicals the day it's shipped to Whole Foods.

This year, strawberries will be even better than usual. There are two reasons: rain and a cooler spring. Those mean larger fruit, and also extended shelf life, which means less waste. That is a win on every level.