The man who is credited with starting the Green Revolution has died. Norman Borlaug, 95 and a resident of Dallas, passed away Saturday evening. "In the early 1960s Prof Borlaug realised that creating short-stemmed varieties would leave food plants more energy for growing larger heads of grain," the BBC reported. "His high-yield, disease-resistant dwarf wheat quickly boosted harvests in Latin America, and his techniques were particularly successful in South Asia, where famine was widespread. Analysts believe the Green Revolution helped avert a worldwide famine in the late 20th century." Borlaug won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work. 

Borlaug was born in Iowa —''I was born out of the soil of Howard County,'' he said. ''It was that black soil of the Great Depression that led me to a career in agriculture" — and was a professor at Texas A&M University. He did much of his work when he organized and directed the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico. He remained concerned with food and food production until he died. "We all eat at least three times a day in privileged nations, and yet we take food for granted," Borlaug said in a recent interview. "There has been great progress, and food is more equitably distributed. But hunger is commonplace, and famine appears all too often." 

At a conference in the Philippines in 2006 he said: "We still have a large number of miserable, hungry people and this contributes to world instability. Human misery is explosive, and you better not forget that."

Argentine cattle are going American. "Instead of roaming freely and eating to their hearts' content, a growing number of Argentine cattle are spending a third of their lives in U.S.-style feedlots," writes Juan Forero of the Washington Post. "There, crammed in muddy corrals, they are pumped with antibiotics and fed mounds of protein-rich grain, which fattens them up fast but hardly conjures up the romantic image of the Argentine cowboy, the iconic gaucho, lassoing cattle on the high plains."

Pasture land for cattle is being turned over to corn, wheat and soy bean. And this is not helping the worldwide reputation for Argentine beef. "There's a big difference between grass-fed beef and feedlot beef," said Tomas Leclercq, who manages about 250 head of cattle for a Buenos Aires businessman and eats meat daily. "Beef raised on the plains is better, but there is less and less of it because the land is going for agriculture, so the feedlots are multiplying." Now a third of the 15 million animals slaughtered each year will come from feedlots — three times as many as in 2001.

Farmers in that South American country are switching from beef to crops because crops pay better now. Price controls have kept beef prices low. Crop subsidies make corn more affordable for the feed lots. A devalued currency makes it profitable to export cash crops.

Shoppers look for some sign that the food they buy is good for them and so industry provides the labels — even if the combination of the label and the food makes no sense. For instance, Fruit Loops and Cocoa Krispies are considered a "smart choice"  when in comes to nutrition, at least according to the latest in labeling programs organized by the food manufacturers. 

The New York Times' William Neuman reviews the strange recommendations appearing in food stores now under the Smart Choices labeling initiative. Some of the largest food companies in the country have signed up with the private Smart Choices program, including Kraft, ConAgra and Tyson. They pay $100,000 a year, and in return some of their food gets a green "Smart Choices" label that take the place of nutritional  labels that individual companies had begun using. The companies agree to discontinue their own labeling system in favor of the "Smart Choices" label (which, by the way, contain little real information about the nutritional content of the food). Fruit Loops qualify (as do the other foods in the picture above).

“These are horrible choices,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health. “It’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,” Mr. Willett said. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have sent a letter to the manufacturers saying they intend to monitor the program's effects on consumers.

Last week, people went to Whole Foods because the food was largely organic, fresh and, often, local. Whole Foods fulfilled the desires of people who had strong ideas about the politics of food. This week, however, the same people who shopped Whole Foods for aesthetic and political reasons are avoiding the place — again for political reasons. The president and founder of Whole Foods, John Mackey, wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal opposing President Obama's health care reforms. (He began his piece with a quote from Margaret Thatcher.) Mackey warns of "government bureaucrats" and "socialized medicine." 

The leafy lefties who shopped at Whole Foods because the food there was "better" are now boycotting the place. The Washington Post this morning describes a beginning boycott as consumers are now looking at Whole Foods the way some shoppers once considered Wal-Mart. (Wal-Mart, we should note, announced this summer that it supported universal health care.) Whole Foods shoppers say they feel "betrayed." 

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, meanwhile, announces that "Now is the time for all good capitalists to shop at Whole Foods." (We'll wait to see if good capitalists will pay Whole Foods prices.) Parker picks up Mackey's argument that obesity could be reduced if Americans ate decent foods (the kind of foods sold at you know where). Parker writes: "Mackey's ideas aren't necessarily the only route, but they offer a path that is pro-market, pro-individual and pro-choice -- all concepts that are organic to America and, like spinach, good for you."