Climate Food and Agriculture

Securing a food future in cities: a case study in repurposing military bases

Farm programs on abandoned military land are opportunities to strengthen food deserts.

It's raining chemicals

It starts with a distant, unmistakable whine, like a fly in another room you've been too lazy to swat. As the sound grows, I make sure the dog is inside, then grab the camera and head to the pasture.

Superweeds go mainstream

Yikes. Even the business press has begun to notice that pesticide-resistant "superweeds" are dangerous.

An ode to scary mutant fruits

Awl editor Alex Balk found out that farmers have been tinkering with plant genetics to create cross-breeds like "pluerries," and it inspired him to heights of lyrical brilliance:

Please Don't Make The Fruits Do Sex To Each Other

The freakish fruits that Science spawns—
The pros we know, but not the cons
What laws of nature might we breach
By blending apricot and peach?

For sharks, a race to the fin-ish line?

The shark-fin ban sitting on California Gov. Jerry Brown's desk could help curb a barbaric practice and boost dwindling apex-predator populations. But it also highlights the complexities of sustainable shark fishing.

Stamping out hunger with fast food?

As surprising as it sounds, the recent flurry of responses to a program that makes fast food available with food stamps might be unfounded.

ConAgra pulls a dirty frozen-meal trick on food bloggers

Hey, remember those ads where they used to secretly replace people's actual made-from-beans coffee with freeze-dried Flavor Crystals? Those were a laugh riot, right? So obviously the most genius possible marketing plan for frozen dinners -- basically the food equivalent of instant coffee -- would be to make people think they're eating real made-from-food food, and then alert them that they've been baited and switched. It can't fail! You know, unless the people involved are food bloggers who care about eating organic, fresh, and healthy ingredients rather than mass-fabricated sodium-enhanced spun and capped protein strands. Then they might get pissed.

But ConAgra, makers of such food-adjacent items as Chef Boyardee and Reddi-Wip, didn't see that one coming when they set up a supposed luxury dinner with a group of food bloggers and their guests. The host, chef George Duran, served -- and implied he had cooked -- a main course of lasagna and a dessert of, um, "razzleberry pie." Once the bloggers had gotten it down their necks, Duran told them the food was actually frozen Marie Callender dinners. Smile, you're on ConAgra Camera!

Surprise! Americans are drinking A LOT of soda

On average, Americans now get nearly 10 percent of their calories from soda and other sugary beverages.

Field of broken dreams

New labor laws could protect children as young as 12 from working, and even dying, in dangerous jobs on industrial farms. But do they go far enough?

Farmers who don't believe in climate change adapting to it anyway

In our nation's breadbasket, adaptation to climate change is very much already in progress -- the attitudes of those who represent farmers in our nation's capital notwithstanding. Higher minimum temperatures are reducing yields for corn, which likes hot days but cool nights. So whatever their political leanings, farmers have to adapt or face disaster.