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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‘Lunch Line’ goes behind the counters
Lunch Line has been getting some good buzz — “required viewing!!!” screamed a review by author Tracie McMillan for the Atlantic Food Channel. Filmmakers Michael Graziano and Ernie Park were originally inspired by the Organic School Project, a now-defunct school garden project in Chicago, and had intended to focus the film on it. Once they […]
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Culinary boot camp whips ‘lunch ladies’ into cooking shape
School cafeteria workers, a.k.a “lunch ladies,” rank somewhere below custodial staff in the school pecking order, yet they’re expected to perform miracles in the kitchen, turning pennies into full-blown meals. As part of my Cafeteria Confidential reporting, I recently went to Colorado to observe a “culinary boot camp” in which food-service directors and workers from around […]
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Vietnamese gardeners in New Orleans offer much food for thought
January 2011 update: Many of the photos have been removed from this series so they can be published in a Breaking Through Concrete book, forthcoming this year from UC Press. East New Orleans is lush and crumbling. Sometimes it feels like the built environment — the convenience stores, sugar factories, distant oil refineries, houses, brick […]
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Rejoice! Grist cracks “Top Ten Ethanol Enemies” list
The writing life can be a rocky one. You slog it out in the trenches daily, trying to make a living and a difference. Progress can be slow, or nonexistent. And then you get an honor! And your dim worldview brightens. Such was my delight yesterday, when news came via Twitter and the Corn Corps […]
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Getting into a jam in Nebraska
(Steph Larsen photos) “You live in the middle of nowhere!” This was the exclamation, repeated at regular intervals, we heard when an old high-school friend of mine came to visit. For folks from the city — even Nebraskans — visiting our house can feel like entering another world. There’s no traffic to speak of, and […]
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What Is Our "Right" to Opt Out of the Industrial Food System?
Slavery. Women prohibited from voting. No home schooling allowed. No interracial marriage. These were all official government policy at one time in America’s history, and have since been rejected by the courts. Now, the courts should break with another major taboo: restrictions on our access to food, most notably, raw milk. That’s the argument being […]
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‘Scary Disease Girl’ Maryn McKenna on antibiotic-resistant staph [PODCAST]
“Scary Disease Girl”: Maryn McKennaMaryn McKenna is arguably the premier U.S. public health journalist. Not many on the beat can boast a bio like this: Maryn McKenna’s newsroom nickname is Scary Disease Girl, and she earned it. She has reported from inside a field hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a village on Thailand’s […]
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‘Top Chef’ flunks school-food math
First Lady Michelle Obama and assistant chef Sam Kass in the White House garden. (White House photo)Bravo’s new season of “Top Chef,” set in D.C. and billed as “from the White House to your house,” debuts tomorrow with a big wet kiss for Michelle Obama and her campaign to end childhood obesity. Even the White […]
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Agreed: All processed food is not created equal
At last, Ezra Klein returns to food! And he levels a legitimate criticism at the food movement: One of the really difficult things about getting people to eat better is convincing them that it’s not just a way for others to impose class-based lifestyle preferences on one another. But when you’re down on processed foods […]
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One super-toxic chemical down, thousands more to go
Last week, and capping at least a decades-long battle by consumer advocates, the EPA announced a ban on the pesticide endosulfan — one of the last legal organochlorine pesticides, a notorious group of which DDT is a member. Horrifically toxic (possibly more toxic to humans than DDT) and banned in the European Union since 2007, […]
