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

  • Food Studies: Deconstructing Big Food

    Photo: Krystian OlszanskiFood 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. I’m in a food systems class this semester that is focused on the complex way that food moves from farm to plate (which […]

    Megan Moore Food

  • Food Studies: Post-communist pork, the Goat Whisperer, and other stories from the field

    Mangalica pigs in Hungary. 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. Over the past few months I’ve visited food producers, large and small, all over Europe. I’ve been behind the scenes on […]

    Kathryn Tomajan Food

  • The raw milk martyr

    Schmidt in January 2010, after winning his court case.For nearly a month now, Canadian rancher Michael Schmidt has been engaged in a hunger strike. For over 17 years, Schmidt has been crusading for the right to distribute raw milk to a few hundred Ontario consumers who own shares in his herd of cows. He says […]

    David Gumpert Food

  • Farming with a smaller footprint: Why it matters

    Conservation is an important part of federal farm funding — the laws that shape what, where, and how we grow our food. And yet, if the negotiations around the 2012 Farm Bill go as predicted, funding for conservation is in grave danger. Why does conservation on farms matter? Well, for starters, most large-scale agriculture is […]

    Stephanie Ogburn Agriculture

  • Chow-to: Quench your thirst with a shrub

    Photo: holytoastr“Drinking vinegar” does not, at its core, sound like the most tempting libation. But that’s what a shrub is: a series of ingredients cooked down and preserved in vinegar, then strained into a syrup, and used for a multitude of purposes. Conceived in several parts of the world (derived from the same notion as […]

    Steven Wade Food

  • High BPA levels in pregnant moms may change their daughters’ behavior

    It's not just hippie paranoia that should keep pregnant women from eating too much BPA-laced canned food. A new study found that 3-year-old girls were more likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety if their mothers had tested higher for BPA levels during pregnancy. (There didn’t seem to be a correlation for boys.) The […]

    Sarah Laskow Food

  • Scare trade: Halloween candy you can feel good about

    Photo: Nina HaleFor most of us, Halloween has a strong association with candy. When you’re little, you get to dress up and run around your neighborhood collecting it for free. When you’re a bit older, you get to dress up, get drunk, and buy it steeply discounted on Nov. 1. And when you’re a parent, […]

    Claire Thompson Food

  • Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day

    Northwestern University dining hall workers celebrating new contract as part of the students’ living wage campaign.“They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again.” That’s what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a […]

    Chris Bohner Food

  • Quick and dirty: Congress may rewrite the Farm Bill in two weeks

    Brace yourselves, food advocates: The congressional supercommittee charged with reducing the national debt considers making cuts to the nation's most important food and farming legislation.

    Tom Laskawy Agriculture

  • Harvesting change: Dispatches from a TEDx gathering on farmworkers [VIDEO]

    Last week's TEDx conference brought together some of the sharpest, most creative minds to address the problem of farm labor. See the highlights here.

    Twilight Greenaway Food