Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • Farming is the new hipster occupation of choice

    Twentysomethings don’t know what to do with their lives. Industrial food can’t be trusted. The public image of farmers is (slowly) improving — but the average age is going up and up. These are perfect conditions for a new generation of farmers, people in their 20s and 30s who are starting small farms and joining […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • Factory-farmed pork: it’s the inspirational other white meat!

    Be inspired!: Near a giant hog factory in North Carolina, downed pigs fester while sprayers spread untreated manure onto fields. Photo: Steve WingPork has a new-and-improved slogan. In an announcement that is guaranteed to avoid mockery or satire, the National Pork Board (NPB) has shifted from declaration to exhortation. No longer will pork’s tagline be […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • The last days of the low-fat diet fad

    The low-fat trend finally appears to be on its way out. The notion that saturated fats are detrimental to our health is deeply embedded in our zeitgeist — but shockingly, the opposite just might be true. For over 50 years the medical establishment, public health officials, nutritionists, and dietitians have been telling the American people […]

    Kristin Wartman Food

  • World’s dollar menu will now cost $1.50

    Image: Bloomberg TV USFood is more expensive than ever, says the U.N. We’re talking revolutions in the Middle East, food riots on The Glenn Beck Show-level expensive. Globally, food prices are up by a third since December 2010, putting them well above their last record high, in 2008, when there were food riots from Bangladesh […]

    Christopher Mims Food

  • Minn. Rep. Collin Peterson’s crusade against climate policy rages on

    Collin Peterson — a Democrat even the Koch brothers could love.Photo: Name Your Frame & Photography via Collin PetersonThe sad saga of climate legislation under Obama — its harrowing ride through Congress and final collapse — features many villains. For me, the most maddening isn’t some Tea Party ideologue railing against the “climate conspiracy.” Rather, […]

    Tom Philpott Agriculture

  • Fed-up college kids take food buying into their own hands

    Someone’s forming a co-op, my lord: college students organize to create the food system they want. Photo: Kitty BolteSay you’re a college student ready to eschew the standard pizza-burrito-pretzels-beer diet and start eating more whole, sustainably produced foods. Say you want to take it a step further and work to make healthy and ethical food […]

    Twilight Greenaway Agriculture

  • Time to end the insane practice of lacing chicken feed with arsenic

    As a jaded observer of the meat industry, even I’m flummoxed by this fact: It’s standard practice on factory chicken farms to dose those unfortunate birds with arsenic. The idea is that it makes them grow faster — fast growth being the supreme goal of factory animal farming — and helps control a common intestinal […]

    Tom Philpott Agriculture

  • Your healthy alternative food may just be the same crap in different packaging [SLIDESHOW]

    Looking to lower your impact? Here’s your cheat sheet. GoodGuide offers greenness and social responsibility ratings, via web or app, for tens of thousands of products, including food, clothing, toys, and cleaning supplies. Obviously, it’s massively useful to be able to look up a brand on your phone and see its health and environment score […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • When are we going to stop seeing farmers as rubes and hayseeds?

    Is this really what farmers look like? Our culture abounds with images of farmers. Sadly, many of them are insulting. Stereotypes tell us that farmers are male, white, uneducated, dirty, backwards-thinking, and talk with a funny accent. Farmers don’t get off the farm much, they like chewing on the ends of long stalks of grass, […]

    Steph Larsen Food

  • How to cook and eat a whole duck [VIDEO]

    Nose-to-tail eating sounds like a trend, but it’s really just good practice. Indeed, even before British chef Fergus Henderson made “whole beast” cooking popular, the whole animal was getting used. Slaughterhouses big and small make sure to use every bit of every animal — that’s how they make their money: livers go into dog food, […]

    Daniel Klein Agriculture