Climate Food and Agriculture

The Counter
Amelia K. Bates / Grist
Special Series

Climate + Food and Agriculture

EDITOR’S NOTE

Grist has acquired the archive and brand assets of The Counter, a decorated nonprofit food and agriculture publication that we long admired, but that sadly ceased publishing in May of 2022.

The Counter had hit on a rich vein to report on, and we’re excited to not only ensure the work of the staffers and contractors of that publication is available for posterity, but to build on it. So we’re relaunching The Counter as a food and agriculture vertical within Grist, continuing their smart and provocative reporting on food systems, specifically where it intersects with climate and environmental issues. We’ve also hired two amazing new reporters to make our plan a reality.

Being back on the food and agriculture beat in a big way is critical to Grist’s mission to lead the conversation, highlight climate solutions, and uncover environmental injustices. What we eat and how it’s produced is one of the easiest entry points into the wider climate conversation. And from this point of view, climate change literally transforms into a kitchen table issue.

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Featured

Grist / Eva Marie Uzcategui / The Washington Post via Getty Images; Joe Raedle / Getty Images; Getty Images
Grist / Eva Marie Uzcategui / The Washington Post via Getty Images; Joe Raedle / Getty Images; Getty Images

The people who feed America are going hungry

Climate change is escalating a national crisis, leaving farmworkers with empty plates and mounting costs.

Ayurella Horn-Muller Staff Writer

Latest Articles

  • A local food blueprint

    Photo: Matthew BurpeeThe most exciting aspect of the new USDA report on the local food and farm economy [PDF] isn’t the sizable $4.8 billion in annual sales of local food it says occurred in 2008. It’s the fact that, as the AP noted, the local food economy is poised to grow as fast as even […]

    Tom Laskawy Agriculture

  • Chow-to: Clean sardines

    By now it’s become conventional wisdom that eating low on the food chain is more sustainable. In the case of fish, that means sardines, anchovies, sand-dabs, and other small, short-lived fish. Despite recent news that our small forage fish need to be better managed to avoid future problems, if you’re going to eat fish at […]

    Vanessa Barrington Food

  • The trouble with urban farming: What if your turkeys are cute?

    Kiera Butler is not a farmer. She and her friends have been raising their Thanksgiving turkeys in a backyard for six months, but they're not accustomed to killing animals for food, and they've gotten kind of attached to the little guys. Here's Kiera's story, originally Storified by Mother Jones, about the weirdness of knowing that […]

    Jess Zimmerman Agriculture

  • Something to be thankful for: Real turkeys make a comeback

    Royal Palm Turkey, one of eight varieties considered to be heritage breeds.Photo: Amy Martin PachayIn 1997, The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) took a turkey census. For about half a century, nearly every turkey farm in the U.S. had been raising a breed known as the Broad Breasted White. (This cost-efficient, big-breasted bird has a […]

    Claire Thompson Food

  • Spies among us: Café Nordo’s sustainable dinner theater

    Photo: John CornicelloI’m on Pan Am Flight 892, en route to the 1962 World’s Fair. Only this is no ordinary airline food, and there are spies slinking among the seats. This is To Savor Tomorrow, the latest production from Seattle theater company Cafe Nordo. It’s the company’s fourth foray into dinner theater — although I […]

    Darby Minow Smith Food

  • Slouching toward a bananapocalypse?

    Photo: Frank KehrenFor years journalists have warned of imminent banana extinction. “Get bananas while you still can,” wrote New Scientist over five years ago. “The world’s most popular fruit … is in deep trouble,” it went on to say, adding that the banana would probably be out of supermarkets by 2013, and would soon exist […]

    Heather Smith Food

  • FDA fights fish fraud

    Not only is eating fish not the most sustainable of food choices, it's likely a rip-off. If you're eating a pricey fish like cod or salmon, there's more than a one in five chance that it's something much cheaper. The FDA, though, is developing a new regulatory program to fight fish fraud. The agency is […]

    Sarah Laskow Food

  • Food Studies: What’s up with gluten?

    Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. Gluten is what makes bread dought elastic enough to risePhoto: Three Points KitchenIt’s clear that Americans have an obsession with gluten. Just begin typing the […]

    Mitchell Mattes Food

  • An aging rust belt town becomes a laboratory for sustainability

    Environmental Studies professor David OrrPhoto: Lisa DeJongThis story is the first of two pieces excerpted from a feature story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read part 2 here and the full Chronicle story here. Oberlin, Ohio — This northern Ohio college town is barely a blip on a map, far away from national centers […]

    Scott Carlson Food

  • Don’t bug me, I’m eating [VIDEO]

    Join us on a bug hunt with David Gracer, an entomophagy (bug eating) expert who makes a pretty good case for making wider culinary use of insects. In a world of factory farms and genetically modified foods, catching your own eight-legged friends might just be the sensible way to go. And chances are, you eat […]

    Daniel Klein Food