Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Farming with a smaller footprint: Why it matters
Conservation is an important part of federal farm funding — the laws that shape what, where, and how we grow our food. And yet, if the negotiations around the 2012 Farm Bill go as predicted, funding for conservation is in grave danger. Why does conservation on farms matter? Well, for starters, most large-scale agriculture is […]
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Chow-to: Quench your thirst with a shrub
Photo: holytoastr“Drinking vinegar” does not, at its core, sound like the most tempting libation. But that’s what a shrub is: a series of ingredients cooked down and preserved in vinegar, then strained into a syrup, and used for a multitude of purposes. Conceived in several parts of the world (derived from the same notion as […]
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High BPA levels in pregnant moms may change their daughters’ behavior
It's not just hippie paranoia that should keep pregnant women from eating too much BPA-laced canned food. A new study found that 3-year-old girls were more likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety if their mothers had tested higher for BPA levels during pregnancy. (There didn’t seem to be a correlation for boys.) The […]
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Scare trade: Halloween candy you can feel good about
Photo: Nina HaleFor most of us, Halloween has a strong association with candy. When you’re little, you get to dress up and run around your neighborhood collecting it for free. When you’re a bit older, you get to dress up, get drunk, and buy it steeply discounted on Nov. 1. And when you’re a parent, […]
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Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day
Northwestern University dining hall workers celebrating new contract as part of the students’ living wage campaign.“They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again.” That’s what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a […]
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Quick and dirty: Congress may rewrite the Farm Bill in two weeks
Brace yourselves, food advocates: The congressional supercommittee charged with reducing the national debt considers making cuts to the nation's most important food and farming legislation.
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Harvesting change: Dispatches from a TEDx gathering on farmworkers [VIDEO]
Last week's TEDx conference brought together some of the sharpest, most creative minds to address the problem of farm labor. See the highlights here.
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Occupy the pasture
Steph Larsen loves a good protest. But in her small town, there are no picket signs lining Main St., and it seems a little wrong to drive 120 miles round-trip to attend the nearest Occupy event.
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Pesticides are good for you
What happens when an industry front group tries to tell a room full of food experts that pesticides aren't harmful?
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Sorry, kids: Halloween candy is a human rights nightmare
Here's a really scary story for your Halloween: The candy you're handing out might have been made by foreign students who were tricked into factory labor. Hershey's, which also distributes Cadbury candy in the U.S. and Nabisco candy in Canada, charged students up to $6,000 for a "summer work and travel" program, which actually consisted of drudgery at the packing plant.
