Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before.

The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole of American politics.

American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent.

Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.

Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

I made the unexpected but happy discovery that the answer to several of the questions that most occupied me was in fact one and the same: Cook.