Climate Food and Agriculture
All Stories
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The way we eat is trashing the fragile conditions that make human life possible
In the ongoing debate about whether sustainable agriculture can “feed the world,” it’s important not to lose sight of what industrial agriculture is doing to ecosystems–both in specific areas and on a grand scale. Producing and distributing lots and lots of calories, leveraged by fossil fuel and synthetic fertilizers and poisons, may solve certain short-term […]
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Palm oil, healthy rainforests, and your kitchen
In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. Just get rid of all this annoying rainforest stuff, and you can have all cookie shortening you want.Hi there,I keep hearing that the […]
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Tell USDA to add urban farming to the Ag Census! Deadline is Friday.
If you care about eating healthy food, you are probably already hard at work to build a better food supply for yourself. You already know that raising food in our cities will be increasingly important. Yet getting political support for this requires making a convincing case, and this means having compelling numbers. The federal Census […]
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Beat the August heat with an easy veggie supper
The sweet sizzle of summer. Photo: April McGreger Try as I might, I cannot hate on August. I half-heartedly complain in solidarity with the masses about the stifling heat and humidity, as well as my scratchy, ragweed-irritated eyes. But in truth, this is the time of year I long for. August means watermelons, okra, fresh […]
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Sustainable ag meets the MSM — and wins!
TIME Magazine‘s current cover story wants you to know that our fossil-fueled, chemically intensive industrial food system is destined to fail. Granted, the second part of that sentence isn’t news to Grist readers. But the first part of that sentence is news. Personally, I wouldn’t have expected to read the following positively Philpottian (if not […]
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Let’s (re)do school lunch
Are corndogs a vegetable? There has been a cultural revolution in this country over the last 50 to 75 years, a sort of intellectual cleansing that has removed from most people’s minds any understanding of food, of cooking, of the pleasures of the kitchen and table, and replaced it with the language of the drive-thru, […]
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An ‘agri-intellectual’ talks back
Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist A lot of folks have asked what I think of the essay “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals,” by Missouri corn/soy farmer Blake Hurst, published in The American, the journal of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. My first reaction is that I’m thrilled this debate is taking place. […]
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A debate about soil, organics, and nutrition
Inert medium for turning agrichemichals into food, or a teeming, diverse ecosystem? “The whole problem of health–in soil, plant, animal, and man–is one great subject.” — Albert Howard, The Soil and Health Ezra Klein and I are engaged in a little debate over the value of organic food. I’m honestly a little surprised to be […]
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Will Allen talks about growing the ‘Good Food’ movement
This weekend I caught up with Will Allen who was keynoting the always excellent Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Annual Conference in Amherst, MA. He’s founder and CEO of Growing Power, the country’s premier grassroots urban gardening program, and also a MacArthur Genius Award Winner and former pro-basketball player. Growing Power demonstrates growing methods through on-site […]
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Cargill, the National School Lunch Program, and antibiotic-resistant salmonella
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ———- Is antibiotic-resistant-salmonella-tainted beef what’s for dinner? Standard j-school-style journalism takes a lot of lumps these days–and justifiably so. To maintain an illusion of “objectivity,” traditional reporters write like above-the-fray observers merely recording “the facts”–as if choosing which facts to […]
