Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay
I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary. Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]
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‘Farmers Market Desserts’ lets fruit, not sugar, be the star
Photos courtesy of Leo Gong/Chronicle Books Summer fruits from the farmers market are the supermodels of the produce world. Just like Heidi Klum doesn’t need makeup to be beautiful, a super-fresh White Lady peach or Seascape strawberry doesn’t need extra sweetening or seasoning to shine. But given the right recipe—one designed expressly for fruit and […]
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DC rejects soda tax but funds better school food
The Washington, D.C. city council yesterday agreed to fully fund a recently approved “Healthy Schools” initiative — providing more money for school food, as well as funding local produce in school meals and establishing grants to expand school gardens and increase physical education — but not with a controversial “soda tax” as had been proposed. Rather, […]
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Endocrine disruptors really do suck
U.S. manufacturers and agribusiness are addicted to endocrine disruptors — dangerous chemicals that alter the natural function of the body’s hormones. They are frequently used in plastics, in pesticides, and in personal care products and act in the human body as a “false” version of estrogen. They appear to be linked to a variety of […]
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I eat weeds
Flowers or weeds? Depends on what you’re in the mood for.(Steph Larsen photos) The first edible plant to poke its head out of the ground at my farm early this spring wasn’t lettuce, arugula, broccoli, or any other hardy plant widely seen at early farmers markets. It was stinging nettles. As a child, I nicknamed […]
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Homeless learn to farm in Santa Cruz
January 2011 update: Many of the photos have been removed from this series so they can be published in a Breaking Through Concrete book, forthcoming this year from UC Press. The day began in the parking lot of a real estate office off Hwy 17 south of San Jose. We parked Lewis Lewis there after […]
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Organic Valley lays down the law on raw milk
Organic Valley started up in 1988 with a vision of being a different kind of milk cooperative, one that helped save small family dairies via promoting organic dairy products. “It was an idealistic, mission-oriented place in those days, spreading the gospel about the benefits of organic dairy and founded on the premise of economic-justice for […]
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Prices vs. contracts: Why good CO2 policy needs complex financial markets
Economic theory is predicated on the thesis that if supply and demand are allowed to freely set the price for a given item, rational capital allocation (and a host of other social benefits) will follow. Much of public policy is predicated on the truth of that thsis. But there’s a problem with the thesis: price […]
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A video smorgasbord of sustainable-food speakers
How we let our biology end up in the hands of Nestlé and Unilever and General Foods, we can leave to cultural historians to figure out, But we know now that in order to take back the ownership and responsibility for our health, and the biological integrity of our oceans and our land, we have […]
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A taste test of greener milks
Full Circle’s ultra-pasteurized offering, versus small-farm Blue Hill’s raw milk: Which mooved tasters the most?(Photos by Jason Houston) Putting aside for a moment the dietary arguments against drinking cow’s milk — we’re not calves, it’s liquid meat, it’s snot-producing, so hard to digest, etc. — conventional milk deserves vilification for many reasons. Conventional dairy’s ethically […]
