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

  • Passive-aggressive cakes spill onto Gulf coast

    skooksie via Flickr Creative Commons Some crude feelings about BP’s half-baked efforts are starting to wash up in the cake window of New Orleans grocery store Breaux Mart, likely to be followed by a boom in sales. I wonder how much oil this recipe calls for? via Cake Wrecks —————————————————————————————————————————————————– Like what you see? Sign […]

    Ashley Braun Climate & Energy

  • Feeling sheepish: An exercise in small-town networking

    Sheep ready to be unloaded into their new pen from the borrowed livestock rack.(Steph Larsen photos)My first experience working directly with cows on a daily basis was not a particularly good one. It was 7 years ago on an organic dairy farm in England, and while most of the 99 Ayrshires were docile, the well-placed […]

    Steph Larsen Food

  • Forget broccoli — Berkeley students aren’t keen on beans either

    Part 5 of Cafeteria Confidential: Berkeley, in which Ed Bruske reports on his recent week-long, firsthand look at how Berkeley, Calif., schools part ways from the typical school diet of frozen, industrially processed convenience foods. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest of the Cafeteria Confidential series. After spending hours sorting chicken […]

    Ed Bruske Food

  • Small slaughterhouses on the chopping block, ag research constrained, pushing GMOs

    When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. Get ’em while they’re hot.  New rules, old mindset Everyone should read this article, posted on Chewswise by Joe Cloud, who co-owns a “small-scale locally focused” slaughterhouse outside of Washington, D.C. It’s about proposed new USDA rules […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Oil now threatening Gulf’s cradles of biodiversity, its reefs

    As corals are particularly susceptible to oil detergents and dispersed oil, the results of these assays rules out the use of any oil dispersant in coral reefs and in their vicinity.–From a 2007 paper by Israeli researchers, published in The Journal of Environmental Science (USGS photo)After reading those words a few days ago, I became […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Healthy breakfasts buy lunch in Berkeley schools

    Part 4 of Cafeteria Confidential: Berkeley, in which Ed Bruske reports on his recent week-long, firsthand look at how Berkeley, Calif., schools part ways from the typical school diet of frozen, industrially processed convenience foods. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest of the Cafeteria Confidential series. Breakfasts for Berkeley schoolkids are […]

    Ed Bruske Food

  • Spill-rate lowballing reflects badly on government cleanup oversight

    Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.): “Okay. What is the current spill per day today?”Lamar McKay, President and Chairman of BP America: “The current estimate is 5,000 barrels a day.”— From hearings (PDF) held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Wednesday, May 12, 2010 Still from a May 11 video of oil and gas streaming […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Two Berkeley chefs make healthy food that kids will eat

    Part 3 of Cafeteria Confidential: Berkeley, in which Ed Bruske reports on his recent week-long, firsthand look at how Berkeley, Calif., schools part ways from the typical school diet of frozen, industrially processed convenience foods. Cross-posted from The Slow Cook. And check out the rest of the Cafeteria Confidential series. Berkeley Public Schools Executive Chef […]

    Ed Bruske Food

  • The first law of cow dynamics

    Are mathematicians working on a grand unified theory of cow dynamics? It sure seems that way, according to a MIT Technology review post (hat-tip to Boing Boing): Today, the mathematics of animal synchrony takes a cloven-footed step forward with the unveiling of a model that describes the collective behavior of cows. Cows are well know […]

    Tom Laskawy Food

  • Farmers don’t get vacation

    The old granary on our Nebraska property (Steph Larsen)Farmers know that their chosen profession is not an occupation, but a lifestyle. If you believe the Hollywood version, farming is all about waking up at sunrise, frolicking with cute lambs and chicks, and driving a tractor through a field of waving golden grain. And when the […]

    Steph Larsen Food