Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
-
Why the Bank itself bears its share of responsibility for the global food crisis
Last week, I posted about World Bank economist Don Mitchell’s controversial report on biofuel and food prices. According to Mitchell’s calculations, U.S. and E.U. support for biofuels accounts for 70 to 75 percent of the recent rise in global food-commodity prices — one that could force an additional 100 million people worldwide into poverty conditions, […]
-
Amid climate crisis and rising costs, big media discovers city-grown food
Back in 2006, a Los Angeles developer, Ralph Hurwitz, bull-dozed a highly productive 13-acre farm in the city’s South Central neighborhood. In its place, he intends to plunk down a vast warehouse designed to facilitate trade in goods shipped in from Asia destined for our great nation’s big-box stores. (I wrote about the South Central […]
-
From New Jersey, bad news for factory farms
Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a “state of nature” as “nasty, brutish, and short.” The U.S. meat industry appears to have taken Hobbes’ statement as a prescription for proper animal husbandry. Every year, millions of farm animals are slaughtered without ever knowing anything besides life in a grim, crowded cage. Many are subjected to […]
-
When pleasing industry compulsively takes precedence over public interest
It’s gratifying to see EPA chief Stephen Johnson writhing under pressure to resign in disgrace. The agency is being hounded by lawsuits from states while Johnson faces perjury accusations from Congress. My question: what took so long? Documenting the agency’s recent betrayals of the public interest would take a book, not a blog post. Myself, […]
