Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
-
Quarter water, man!: Eating cheap in the inner city [VIDEO]
With an antic spirit and some NSFW language, Bronx denizens Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam document food culture in New York City’s “bodegas” — corner stores in which fresh food is scarce and pricy, but processed fare is plentiful and stunningly cheap. In some areas, bodegas are the only source of food. Penn and Kam […]
-
![]()
![]()
Florida’s poisoned farmworkers, chefs schooled, Big Food’s raking it in
When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. Get ’em while they’re hot. The fruits of industrial agricultureIn the Atlantic, Barry Estabrook has a great, infuriating short piece showing an instance in which agribusiness has shown “utter disregard for the environment and for the welfare […]
-
![]()
![]()
How the agrichemical industry turns failure into market opportunity
It’s always blue skies for the agrichemical industry Monsanto rolled out seeds genetically engineered to withstand its Roundup herbicide back in the mid-1990s. Today, Roundup Ready crops blanket U.S. farmland. According to USDA figures, 90 percent of soybeans and 60 percent of corn and cotton planted in the United States contain the Roundup-resistant gene. Back-of-the […]
-
![]()
![]()
Tell California lawmakers to say ‘no’ to cancer-causing fumigant
Farm workers harvest strawberries in California. Photo: Holgerhubbs, under a Creative Commons licence. To grow strawberries on an industrial scale, you’ve got to sterilize the soil ahead of planting with harsh chemical fumigants. For years, growers have relied on a highly toxic, ozone-destroying fumigant called methyl bromide. The stuff is so awful that it was […]
