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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Sweet Tooth and Nail
Efforts to restore Florida’s Everglades hit a snag yesterday, when the state’s top environmental regulator suggested delaying by 20 years the cleanup of phosphorus from South Florida waters. David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, had previously backed a plan to reduce the presence of phosphorus from a whopping 300 parts per […]
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Umbra on garbage disposals
Dear Umbra: When my garbage disposal died recently, I replaced it with a clever new design that uses no electricity (just water pressure), but it led me to wonder which is really kinder to the environment: putting kitchen waste in the disposal or just trashing it? I compost whenever possible, of course, but there are […]
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The Rootworm of All Evil
In a major win for the biotech industry, the U.S. government yesterday gave Monsanto the green light to sell corn that has been genetically modified to resist rootworm disease, the most significant threat to the crop. The effort to combat rootworm has been the single biggest reason farmers use pesticides, so the decision will be […]
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The Hunger! The Hunger!
The world’s population is growing, yet world hunger is on the wane — a testament to the success of agriculture. But with the global population expected to increase 50 percent by mid-century, many doubt whether our current food system can continue to provide. The problem isn’t the ability to keep producing more food; the problem […]
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One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Dead Mississippi
Six states whose waters feed the lower Mississippi River agreed this week to work together to reduce the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizers, sewage, and other nutrient-rich pollution flowing from 42 states into the Mississippi produce the annual dead zone at the mouth of the river — a stretch of water with […]
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The Fish-scales of Justice
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is suing five major grocery store chains to force them to warn customers that tuna, swordfish, and shark may contain dangerously high levels of mercury. In the suit, Lockyer claims that Safeway, Kroger, Albertson’s, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods are violating Proposition 65, which requires companies to provide “clear and […]
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Weed Wackos
The widespread use of Roundup, a common herbicide developed by Monsanto, has caused weeds that are resistant to the chemical to spring up on a half-million acres of agricultural land across the U.S. At fault, scientists say, is the popularity of bioengineered crops that are “Roundup Ready” — that is, created by Monsanto to be […]
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GM’s My Anti-nutrient. What’s Yours?
Genetically modified food could contain excessive amounts of dangerous compounds because of the government’s failure to adequately regulate the production of such foods, according to a report being released today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The report says the Food and Drug Administration made “obvious errors” in reviewing some GM crops, […]
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The Rain in Lesotho Caused Mainly Lots of Pain
Rain. Drought. Hailstorms. Tornadoes. Frost. You’d be hard-pressed to name a weather phenomenon that hasn’t afflicted the African kingdom of Lesotho in recent times, destroying its crops and leaving one-third of its 2.1 million people on the brink of starvation. Now, many scientists are saying that those people, along with nearly 40 million other Africans […]
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Filling Up Wide Open Spaces
Forget about urban sprawl; the new menace facing the U.S. landscape is rural sprawl, according to some experts. In seeking refuge from city life, Americans started by moving to the suburbs; then they started building beyond the suburbs, creating “exurbs”; now, they’re gradually expanding into some of the country’s most remote areas. Growth rates of […]
