Climate Food and Agriculture

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  • Tasting five organic French roasts leads to buzzkill

    Photos: Jason Houston To say that I love coffee is a big, fat lie. I need coffee in a chemically dependent way. Its effect upon me is essentially the reverse of those faces-of-meth photos. There are two things that can really screw up a good coffee buzz (OK, three if you count skim milk). First […]

    Lou Bendrick Food

  • What’s driving our favorite fruit into decline?

    The Calville Blanc d’Hiver, an heirloom variety dating from 15th-century France, will not be showing up in your supermarket, nor will the others in the slideshow below. Photo: Michaela/The Gardener’s EdenYou’ve heard the hackneyed phrase “as American as apple pie.” But America is not taking care of the apples — or the orchard-keepers — that […]

    Gary Nabhan Food

  • Blowin’ in the wind: The true meaning of ‘ag unity’

    Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and […]

    Debra Eschmeyer Food

  • Demolishing density in Detroit

    Photo: Fast Company So it’s come to this: Unable to provide basic services for all of his constituents, Detroit mayor Dave Bing is drafting plans starve his city down to a manageable size. Using proprietary data and a survey released by Data Driven Detroit, Bing and his staff will pick “winners and losers” amongst the […]

    Fast Company Cities

  • Getting back to our green roots with potlikker soup

    Collard greens, pork stock, and corn dumplings soak in the rich broth of history.  (Photos by April McGreger) Recently I was one of more than 1,000 Southern farmers, chefs, and co-producers attending the Georgia Organics Conference in Athens, Ga. The theme of the conference was “Reclaiming Agriculture,” with the spotlight on “culture.” The keynote speaker, […]

    April McGreger Food

  • The N of an era: America’s nitrogen dilemma — and what we can do about it

    There are three things on which the mighty engine of U.S. agriculture depends: water, fuel, and synthetic nitrogen. Like water, nitrogen is elemental to life. It’s the essential building block of the plants we eat. Farmers remove it from the soil when they harvest the year’s crop, and they must replenish it for the following […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Tracking down the public-health implications of nitrogen pollution

    Picture a hot summer day in California farm country, say 112 degrees. In the tiny community of Tooleville, surrounded by olive trees and orange groves, there’s one thing you won’t see here that you’d see almost anywhere else in the sunny state — kids splashing in backyard pools. “People don’t let their kids swim in […]

    Claudine Benmar Food

  • Pig Business: Who owns your food owns you

    Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess? That’s the impression I get when watching many of the recent spate of food documentaries. Activists announce that this or that is wrong with the food system; on the rare occasion when something appears to be getting done about it, the […]

    Kurt Michael Friese Food

  • Food as America’s newest religion

    Meanwhile the eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them. When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples […]

    Eric Burkett Food

  • Chef Jamie Oliver takes on the American school lunchroom in his new show

    In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related video from around the Web. _________ Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s new show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution takes him to Huntington, West Virginia, “the fattest city in America.” Oliver’s goal: nothing more than to remake residents’ attitude towards food. And it looks like he’s got his hands […]

    Tom Laskawy Food