Climate Food and Agriculture
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.
Featured
The people who feed America are going hungry
Climate change is escalating a national crisis, leaving farmworkers with empty plates and mounting costs.
Latest Articles
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Dairy cows frolic in meadow to celebrate spring [VIDEO]
Still trying to keep it positive! One thing that that makes it easier is that spring really has arrived up here in the North Carolina mountains — it must be 70 degrees, and the arugula we planted a few weeks ago in cold frames is taking off. Evidently, it’s spring-time in England, too. I dare […]
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Here’s why you can’t afford food anymore
Food prices jumped 3.9 percent in February, the largest one-month increase since November 1974. It’s turtles all the way down: Grocery prices are up, wholesale food prices are up, prices for staples like corn and grain are up. Here’s a few things you won’t be affording in the future: Bacon. The retail price for bacon […]
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Forget the gloom — new ways of living and organizing our economy are flourishing
Despite a flurry of bad news recently, good things are spouting up.Photo: Judy Merrill-SmithThe last couple of days have been gloomy ones. I kept checking in with the vague and dire reports from the nuclear-power bleeding edge in Japan. For part of the time I was also immersed in a post about truly awful things […]
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Breakfast is not so gr-r-reat when your only option is Frosted Flakes
Breakfast cub: Tony the Tiger says start your kid’s day with big bowls of sweetened corn.Photo: Jim BarkerOne in four children goes without breakfast each morning, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a tragedy to be sure — but are Kellogg’s breakfast products the solution? Last week, Kellogg announced its new project called Share […]
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Poultry industry smothers immigrant farmers and abuses antibiotics
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Cheap shot: a sale currently in effect at Randall’s stores in Texas. The U.S. meat industry offers some of the biggest bargains you can find: stuff like “boneless skinless chicken breasts” for just two bucks a pound; or a […]
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To make local food more accessible, time to revive mid-sized farms
Today is National Agriculture Day. Have you hugged your farmer yet? To celebrate this special day, I’ve dug this column out of the archives, originally published three years ago this spring. It’s a tribute to mid-size farms, which don’t make nearly as much cash as their industrial-scale brethren and don’t get nearly the love lavished […]
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Maine towns reject one-size-fits-all regulation, declare ‘food sovereignty’
Photo: Chewonki Semester SchoolIn 2009, Maine farmer Heather Retberg learned that new regulations prohibited her from bringing her chickens to a neighbor’s approved slaughtering facility. She’d have to invest some $30,000 she didn’t have to build her own facility. So Retberg shifted her focus to raw dairy instead, selling directly to local neighbors. When she […]
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How two 15-year-old Girl Scouts (and Grist readers) changed Kellogg’s
It’ll take some willpower, but don’t have “samoa” until they stop harming the planet.Photo: Laura TaylorWhen Kellogg’s announced this week that it is moving to limit the deforestation caused by the palm oil it uses to make Frosted Flakes, Keebler cookies, Rice Krispies, and Girl Scout cookies, it represented an enormous achievement for two 15-year-old […]
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I’ve got a good food story to tell: yours [VIDEO]
The Perennial Plate has been creating weekly videos about real food in Minnesota for the past year. Today, we released our 52nd video: a trailer for our upcoming project. This spring, I will be travelling across the country for six months, documenting stories about good food in America. Each week we will be filming, editing, and releasing […]
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Another week, another attempt to shield factory farms from public scrutiny
Above: Last spring, a Humane Society of the United States investigtor, posing as an employee, got a camera into an egg factory to film conditions there. If Iowa lawmakers have their way, such muckraking will be illegal. ——— It’s not just Florida. In what appears to be a growing movement, industrial farmers have convinced Iowa […]