Climate Food and Agriculture

All Stories

  • Now’s the time to discover the myriad pleasures of growing food

    “A natural diet lies right at one’s feet.” — Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution It’s springtime here on my mountain farm, and that means an explosion of activity. We’re starting seeds in one greenhouse, and finishing construction on another. Fields are being tilled, and we’re putting in the very first sugar-snap peas and spring onions. […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Biofuels force the choice on us

    Lester Brown says the diversion is already happening:

    Adam Browning Climate & Energy

  • Appropriate technology?

    Here's an interesting article about a rabbi who converted a bus into a wood-fired matzo bakery ...

    Roz Cummins Food

  • Don’t Make Me Pull This Cargill Over

    Amazon soy export plant shut down in win for environmentalists Greens did a victory dance this weekend as Brazil forced U.S. agribiz giant Cargill to close a soy export terminal in the country’s Amazon region. The facility has long been the focus of a targeted Greenpeace campaign protesting rapid deforestation of the tropical rainforest — […]

    Grist staff Food

  • A ‘Maoist insurgency’ in a global information-technology hub?

    Did you know that India, hub of the global information economy and destination of untold numbers of outsourced U.S. jobs, is in the grips of a Maoist insurgency? A recent Reuters article referred (a bit casually) to: the Maoist insurgency that has spread to about half of India’s 29 states and has been described by […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • I’m Hot, Sticky Sweet

    Vermont’s maple-syrup industry braces for climate change Will warmer winters stop the flow of Vermont maple syrup? That’s the question of the day in the Green Mountain State, where folks worry that climate change will make the $200 million industry — which provides 32 percent of U.S. syrup output — dry up. “I’ve always been, […]

    Grist staff Climate & Energy

  • Turnip Out is Fair Play

    FDA issues voluntary produce-safety guidelines If you’ve shied away from spinach since last year’s widespread E. coli outbreak, this should give you comfort: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued voluntary guidelines this week to help keep fresh-cut produce safe. What, the “voluntary” part gives you pause? Pshaw. Pointing out that voluntary guidelines for production […]

    Grist staff Food

  • Colorado’s inmates-as-farmworkers plan says plenty about our food culture

    Last summer, the Colorado General Assembly passed some of the nation’s most rigorous anti-immigrant policy laws. Debate was fierce — but only because some GOP lawmakers fumed that the Democratic-engineered crackdown wasn’t draconian enough. How times have changed. Essentially, the state’s political elite — backed editorially by The Denver Post — took aim at its […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • My address to the Southern Appalachian Youth on Food conference

    One crop to rule them all. Photo: USDA Tucked into the rolling hills of North Carolina’s Swannanoa Valley, Warren Wilson College is essentially surrounded by a farm. The school’s 800 students not only tend the 275-acre farm — which includes pastured livestock and vegetables — they also provide the labor to run the campus. They […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Uh, no it doesn’t

    News flash: Coca-Cola has responded to consumer demand and is now producing “healthy” beverages. “Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands,” Coke’s CEO E. Neville Isdell told The New York Times. He was referring to a new product called Diet Coke Plus, which is Diet Coke plus a few vitamins. Where do […]

    Tom Philpott Food