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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

  • Let’s (re)do school lunch

    Are corndogs a vegetable? There has been a cultural revolution in this country over the last 50 to 75 years, a sort of intellectual cleansing that has removed from most people’s minds any understanding of food, of cooking, of the pleasures of the kitchen and table, and replaced it with the language of the drive-thru, […]

    Kurt Michael Friese Food

  • An ‘agri-intellectual’ talks back

    Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist A lot of folks have asked what I think of the essay “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals,” by Missouri corn/soy farmer Blake Hurst, published in The American, the journal of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. My first reaction is that I’m thrilled this debate is taking place. […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • A debate about soil, organics, and nutrition

    Inert medium for turning agrichemichals into food, or a teeming, diverse ecosystem? “The whole problem of health–in soil, plant, animal, and man–is one great subject.” — Albert Howard, The Soil and Health Ezra Klein and I are engaged in a little debate over the value of organic food. I’m honestly a little surprised to be […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Will Allen talks about growing the ‘Good Food’ movement

    This weekend I caught up with Will Allen who was keynoting the always excellent Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Annual Conference in Amherst, MA. He’s founder and CEO of Growing Power, the country’s premier grassroots urban gardening program, and also a MacArthur Genius Award Winner and former pro-basketball player. Growing Power demonstrates growing methods through on-site […]

    Erik Hoffner Food

  • Cargill, the National School Lunch Program, and antibiotic-resistant salmonella

     In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ———- Is antibiotic-resistant-salmonella-tainted beef what’s for dinner? Standard j-school-style journalism takes a lot of lumps these days–and justifiably so. To maintain an illusion of “objectivity,” traditional reporters write like above-the-fray observers merely recording “the facts”–as if choosing which facts to […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Canada set to close important asset: its prison farms

    In February 2009, Canada’s Public Safety Minister and the country’s Correctional Service announced a planned closure of all six of the prison farms owned by the people of Canada and operated by CORCAN – the branch of the Correctional Service that operates the farm rehabilitation programs which also provide employment training to inmates. The excellent […]

    Erik Hoffner Food

  • More thoughts on cooking, Pollan, and Julia Child

    Tool of oppression–or liberation? In his recent essay on cooking, which I commented on here, Michael Pollan basically argues that people need to cook–that they give up more than they gain from fleeing the kitchen. And he suggests that the current generation is really the first to shun cooking. Yet things might not be quite […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • The thread on which civilization hangs

    “Number one is that it [industrial agriculture] destroys soil. Absolutely and completely. The soil is the only thread upon which civilization can exist, and it’s such a narrow strip around the globe if a person could ever realize that our existence depends on literally inches of active aerobic microbial life on terra firma, we might […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Debunking the meat/climate change myth

    Editor’s note: Eliot Coleman is one of the most revered and influential small-scale farmers in the United States, famous for growing delicious vegetables through the Maine winter with little use of fossil fuel. Eliot sent me the following letter as a response to my recent piece on the greenhouse-gas foorprint of industrial meat. At question […]

    Eliot Coleman Climate & Energy

  • What’s the dish on farm-raised catfish?

    In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. ————- What’s up, cat?Dear Lou,My wife and I enjoy fish and like to eat a variety of types of fish. Living in Minnesota […]

    Lou Bendrick Food