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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

  • From Whole (junk) Foods to Julia/Julie hype, tasty morsels from around the Web

    When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. —————- • “Everything I’ve written is straw,” Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have lamented from his deathbed. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey seems to have come to a similar conclusion about the supermarket chain he founded decades […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Cargill plant recalls nearly a million pounds of tainted beef

    Not-so-total recall: Cargill’s got nearly a million pounds of tainted beef circulating.  In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. ——— Remember a couple of weeks ago, when news emerged that a Colorado grocery chain had churned out 466,000 pounds of beef tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella, sent it […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Meat, climate change, and industry tripe

    Washington Post food-politics columnist Ezra Klein has taken a stand: people should eat less meat, because of its vast greenhouse gas footprint. To make his case, Ezra cited the FAO’s landmark “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report, which found that global meat production is responsible for 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. To be honest, when […]

    Tom Philpott Climate & Energy

  • Thoughts inspired by Pollan’s provocative piece on cooking

    Where is everybody?Photo: Shindz, via FlickrWhen I think hard about what it would take to create a just and sustainable food system, two big obstacles spring immediately to mind: 1) we need more people growing food; and 2) we need more people cooking it, too. In his latest blockbuster in the New York Times Magazine, […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • From southern Spain, the king of summer soups

    Spanish steps to the perfect summer soup.Like Penelope Cruz, my restaurant has a Spanish accent. I can’t quite say “theme,” because the menu is far from 100 percent Spanish; but we focus on tapas and serve classic preperations like paella and sangria. This time of year, our Spanish lilt mandates gazpacho. Some of the best dishes […]

    Kurt Michael Friese Food

  • With House food-safety bill a done deal, questions remain [UPDATED]

    Healthy appetizer — or public-health menace.[The House Food Safety Bill passed overwhelmingly Thursday afternoon. See more at bottom of post.] ————- The House will vote today on a momentous, controversial plan to overhaul a large swath of the nation’s food-safety system. The vote comes amid yet another round of recalls. On Tuesday, the FDA announced […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • On the origin of ‘superweeds’ and the chemical treadmill

    “There is no telling how many articles I have written with the theme of ‘Roundup every Monday morning until there is nothing out there but soybeans’ or ‘the best tank mix partner with Roundup is more Roundup.’ That made soybean farming so easy that even I could probably have done it.”—Ford L. Baldwin of Arkansas-based […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Dow Agrosciences: farm like there’s no tomorrow!

    “If you’re going to farm a piece of land, you ought to farm it for all its worth.”–Tim Hassinger, commercial vice president at Dow AgroSciences, quoted in an AP story called “Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture.”

    Tom Philpott Food

  • From “sexy meat” to fabulous ice cream, tasty morsels from around the web

    When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. ———— • Fascinating–and elegantly done–graphic depiction of British food consumption since the 1970s. (Via Internet Food Association.) • You know that nasty industrial meat I’ve been writing so much about lately? Turns out it’s sexy–according to the […]

    Tom Philpott Food

  • Chilean salmon industry plunges into an abyss of pesticides and antibiotics

    Down on the farm: most salmon consumed in the U.S. comes from industrial aquaculture. Ninety percent of the salmon consumed in the United States comes from factory-style farms–most of it imported. Until very recently, our biggest supplier was Chile–whose salmon industry is in a state of collapse, ravaged by a virus called “infectious salmon anemia.” […]

    Tom Philpott Food