Climate Food and Agriculture

All Stories

  • Don’t drink the weed killer: Atrazine taints rural groundwater

    Photo: T.P. MartinsIf you want to understand all that is wrong with our government’s environmental safety priorities, you need only look at the sad story of the weed killer atrazine. Despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated its dangers, it remains one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. — to […]

    Tom Laskawy Food and Agriculture

  • Chicken chases its kale: Chik-fil-A attacks artist over leafy-green slogan

    Photo: Ellen KFor all of you poor souls who can’t tell kale and chicken apart (lord knows it can be difficult), your troubles may soon be over. Chik-fil-A, the country’s second-largest chain chicken restaurant (after KFC), is pressuring Vermont-based small-business owner Bo Muller-Moore to drop the phrase “Eat More Kale,” which he’s been screen-printing by […]

    Claire Thompson Food and Agriculture

  • Talking vertical farms: An interview with Dickson Despommier

    Your classic vertical farm rendering. Rendering: Blake KurasekIf you haven’t seen the slickly rendered architectural models of farms growing in skyscapers, you probably live under a rock. When I first I saw one — this was a few years back, they’ve been making their way around the internet for years — I got a little […]

    Twilight Greenaway Food and Agriculture

  • Crop insurance: This year’s Farm Bill frontier

    2011 was a record year for liability, with drought in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, and Hurricane Irene taking out crops along the Eastern seaboard. Photo: Bob Gutowski One of the great battles of the 2012 Farm Bill might concern … (drumroll) … crop insurance! Don’t roll your eyes: At $8 billion, it’s the largest part […]

    Heather Smith Food and Agriculture

  • Food Studies: Old-world innovation

    Le Biancane geothermal park.Photo: Yvone De Zeeuw Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. Pipelines carry steam directly to consumers from the power plant.Vapor escapes through mountains of white rocks. Steam billows […]

    Kathryn Tomajan Food and Agriculture

  • Learning on the half-shell

    Photo: Gwendolyn MeyerLuc Chamberland thinks oyster farming is often misunderstood. That’s why the aquaculturist wants to educate the public about the benefits of cultivating bivalves in Tomales Bay, a pristine estuary in West Marin, Calif. A recent, high-profile controversy surrounding a commercial oyster farm in the area has focused on the potentially negative environmental impacts […]

    Sarah Henry Food and Agriculture

  • Eat leftovers, save the world

    Photo: Patrick Gage KelleyAs if turkey pot pie and turkey a la king aren’t enticing enough on their own, here’s another reason to eat leftovers this holiday season: About 1 million tons of CO2, 95 billion gallons of water, and $275 million will be thrown away this Thanksgiving in the form of leftover turkey. The USDA […]

    Dana Gunders Food and Agriculture

  • Friend of a farmer: Why small-scale ag needs community

    Photo courtesy of the USDA archivesTucked into the end of a recent New York Times article about young farmers were two frank paragraphs about a quiet reality many of us face: Ms. Oakley said young farmers rarely discussed that lack of community, adding that she had seen the isolation break up marriages. At their Three […]

    Steph Larsen Food and Agriculture

  • Don’t look now, but some turkey has antibiotic-resistant superbugs

    Not to put a damper on your Thanksgiving or anything, but there are two new studies showing that drug-resistant bugs like MRSA are showing up in farmed meat, including turkey. Farm animals get fed a cocktail of antibiotics, which can create resistant strains of bacteria. It's been hard (though not impossible) to determine whether that's […]

    Jess Zimmerman Food

  • Turkeyless interlude [VIDEO]

    Turkey gets a lot of airtime this week. There a million recipes to brine, baste, smoke, and stuff the bird as well as a plethora of ways to make mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato pie. So I decided to do a little twist on our traditional Thanksgiving meal and take a “road less […]

    Daniel Klein Food