Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Better Eating Through Engineering
I’ve been interested in efforts to improve school lunches ever since my days as a reporter at the Seattle P-I, and here’s one of the coolest ideas I’ve run across: the “smart cafeteria.” Despite our best efforts to get kids to love jicama sticks or broccoli spears, you can’t really force them to eat something […]
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Global weirding and the scrambling of terroir
Hail storms, tornadoes, and other weather anomalies are battering growers around the country. How can farmers, their seeds, and breeds learn to adapt to uncertainty itself?
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Obama's riding the (cellulosic) ethanol pony — here's why he should buck the trend
Like countless politicians before him, Obama is striving to shore up his political support in the Midwest by dangling goodies for the ethanol industry. This time, though, it's cellulosic ethanol -- which, I argue, isn't nearly as ecologically benign as advertised.
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What a 'sweet surprise'! HFCS contains more fructose than believed
A new study shows that assumptions about fructose/glucose ratios in high-fructose corn syrup have been way off. And since fructose is demonstrably worse for us than glucose, this could explain a lot.
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With school-lunch reform on the rocks, it may be time to invest in 'smart cafeterias'
With Congress unable to pass meaningful school lunch reform, researchers are suggesting that simple changes to the lunchroom -- as easy as placing apples in a basket -- could have big effects.
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Hitting the Big Apple's food-justice buffet
New York City is jam-packed with urban farms, community gardens, and food-justice projects. Not all of them are what they seem, I've discovered, but one has stolen my heart.
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A close encounter with China's sewer-oil trade
The Chinese diet uses tons upon tons of cooking oil every day. Some of it comes disgustingly from the waste stream. Here's how the government could flush the sewer-oil black market down the drain.
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Acknowledging women's role in the sustainable food movement
Women dominate the staffs of critical food- and farming-focused NGOs. They run farms, important blogs, and local-food restaurants. So why is Alice Waters the only one we ever hear about?
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New tool maps and grades 'food deserts' to lure supermarkets
The Reinvestment Fund's PolicyMap layers several types of demographic data to reveal which areas really lack access to food.
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Waiting for a hard frost
Reflections at the end of a Midwestern growing season.
