Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
-
DIY role model: Delilah Snell
Photo: Aida Mollenkamp A version of this interview first appeared on Aida Mollenkamp’s website. Meet food wonder woman (or funderwoman, as I call her), Delilah Snell. She may be the most prolific person I know, with her hands in numerous activities at once. She’s also a Master Food Preserver (there are only a handful of in the […]
-
The Farm Bill: The view from the grassroots
The odds that most of us laypeople will have any opportunity to influence this year’s Farm Bill process are looking awfully slim. Sure, there’s still a chance the current, nearly opaque supercommittee process, and the piece of it now known as “the Secret Farm Bill,” could break down. If that happens, the National Sustainable Agriculture […]
-
Congress wants to count pizza as a vegetable in school lunches
Parents! You needn't worry about what public schools are feeding your kids, because the USDA is reforming school lunch standards and cutting out things like potatoes and salty foods and … oh wait, that was true. But now Congress has gotten involved. And that means that the government is on track to declare pizza a […]
-
A local food blueprint
Photo: Matthew BurpeeThe most exciting aspect of the new USDA report on the local food and farm economy [PDF] isn’t the sizable $4.8 billion in annual sales of local food it says occurred in 2008. It’s the fact that, as the AP noted, the local food economy is poised to grow as fast as even […]
-
Chow-to: Clean sardines
By now it’s become conventional wisdom that eating low on the food chain is more sustainable. In the case of fish, that means sardines, anchovies, sand-dabs, and other small, short-lived fish. Despite recent news that our small forage fish need to be better managed to avoid future problems, if you’re going to eat fish at […]
-
The trouble with urban farming: What if your turkeys are cute?
Kiera Butler is not a farmer. She and her friends have been raising their Thanksgiving turkeys in a backyard for six months, but they're not accustomed to killing animals for food, and they've gotten kind of attached to the little guys. Here's Kiera's story, originally Storified by Mother Jones, about the weirdness of knowing that […]
-
Something to be thankful for: Real turkeys make a comeback
Royal Palm Turkey, one of eight varieties considered to be heritage breeds.Photo: Amy Martin PachayIn 1997, The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) took a turkey census. For about half a century, nearly every turkey farm in the U.S. had been raising a breed known as the Broad Breasted White. (This cost-efficient, big-breasted bird has a […]
-
Spies among us: Café Nordo’s sustainable dinner theater
Photo: John CornicelloI’m on Pan Am Flight 892, en route to the 1962 World’s Fair. Only this is no ordinary airline food, and there are spies slinking among the seats. This is To Savor Tomorrow, the latest production from Seattle theater company Cafe Nordo. It’s the company’s fourth foray into dinner theater — although I […]
-
Slouching toward a bananapocalypse?
Photo: Frank KehrenFor years journalists have warned of imminent banana extinction. “Get bananas while you still can,” wrote New Scientist over five years ago. “The world’s most popular fruit … is in deep trouble,” it went on to say, adding that the banana would probably be out of supermarkets by 2013, and would soon exist […]
-
FDA fights fish fraud
Not only is eating fish not the most sustainable of food choices, it's likely a rip-off. If you're eating a pricey fish like cod or salmon, there's more than a one in five chance that it's something much cheaper. The FDA, though, is developing a new regulatory program to fight fish fraud. The agency is […]
