If you look up the definition of “yellow journalism” you should find a picture of last week’s TIME Magazine cover story – which was renamed “Getting Real about the High Cost of Cheap Food” – after first being headlined “America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix it.”

Wikipedia gives several characteristics of yellow journalism that fit this attack on modern agriculture, such as the “practice of over-dramatizing events,” “scare headlines in huge print,” and the use of “misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.”

This very one-sided article used only one quote from an agricultural organization in more than 3200 words that condemn both crop and livestock production in the United States as heading us down the road to a “future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste.”

I spent more time on this fantasy story than it is worth writing a post on Corn Commentary about it, and several other agricultural reporters have done the same. See in particular – Chuck Jolley with Cattle Network, who digs into the article author’s background; commentary from Rick Jordahl with Pork magazine; and a call from Drovers encouraging people to send letters to the editor at TIME regarding the story.