The ranching industry’s toxic grass problem
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Robert Langellier
1d ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact nearly 2 million readers a month across all platforms Grist America’s “fescue belt,” named for an exotic grass called tall fescue, dominates the pastureland from Missouri and Arkansas in the west to the coast of the Carolinas in the east. Within that swath, a quarter of the nation’s cows — more than 15 million in all — graze fields that stay green through the winter while the rest of the region’s grasses turn brown and go dormant.  But the fescue these cows are eating is toxic. The animals lose hooves. Parts of their tails and the tips of their ears ..read more
Visit website
Tribal nations want more control over their food supply
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Bridget Huber
1M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million web readers a month 2 million social users a month Mother Jones This article is part of FERN’s series The Farm Bill Fight Tribal nations want more control over their food supply By Bridget Huber,  February 21, 2024 The essential workers missing from the farm bill By Teresa Cotsirilos,  February 14, 2024 The farm bill hall of shame By Claire Kelloway,  February 7, 2024 When must-pass meets mega-partisan By Lee Drutman and Dustin Wahl,  January 31, 2024 Want farmers to protect the environment? By Tom Philpott,  J ..read more
Visit website
Growing tobacco in the United States no longer makes sense
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Duncan Murrell
1M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 6.4 million pageviews per month The New Republic Linwood Scott III climbs two-story tobacco cropping machines with real agility and apparently no thought to falling. The sixth-generation tobacco farmer is proud of his machinery, upgraded 20 years ago and therefore relatively new. He delights in every tool and accoutrement of the cropping, curing, and baling process: every trailer, every sawed-off school bus that pulls those trailers, every conveyor belt, every one of his 200 small curing barns. Scott, in his early fifties, is from Lucama, North Carolina ..read more
Visit website
The farm bill hall of shame
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Jeff Fassnacht
1M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million web readers a month 2 million social users a month Mother Jones This article is part of FERN’s series The Farm Bill Fight The farm bill hall of shame By Claire Kelloway,  February 7, 2024 When must-pass meets mega-partisan By Lee Drutman and Dustin Wahl,  January 31, 2024 Want farmers to protect the environment? By Tom Philpott,  January 31, 2024 Like a reveler who chases each of many tequila shots with a seltzer, U.S. farm policy consists of comically clashing impulses likely to result in a nasty hangover. The Departme ..read more
Visit website
Why are GOP governors taking food out of the mouths of poor kids?
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Bryce Covert
1M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million web readers a month 2 million social users a month Mother Jones When I spoke to Mandi Remington in late January, she had $7 in her bank account and had run out of milk. At times like these, which happen toward the end of most months, she cobbles together “stone soup” from what’s in the house, she said, or feeds her three children and then makes her own meal from whatever is left on their plates.  So when she found out that Iowa, where she lives in Iowa City, is among the 15 states that decided not to participate in Summer EBT, a new feder ..read more
Visit website
When must-pass meets mega-partisan
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Lee Drutman
2M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million web readers a month 2 million social users a month Mother Jones This article is part of FERN’s series The Farm Bill Fight When must-pass meets mega-partisan By Lee Drutman and Dustin Wahl,  January 31, 2024 Want farmers to protect the environment? By Tom Philpott,  January 31, 2024 Like a reveler who chases each of many tequila shots with a seltzer, U.S. farm policy consists of comically clashing impulses likely to result in a nasty hangover. The Department of Agriculture doles out substantial subsidies each year to entice fa ..read more
Visit website
Want farmers to protect the environment?
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Tom Philpott
2M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million web readers a month 2 million social users a month Mother Jones This article is part of FERN’s series The Farm Bill Fight When must-pass meets mega-partisan By Lee Drutman and Dustin Wahl,  January 31, 2024 Want farmers to protect the environment? By Tom Philpott,  January 31, 2024 Like a reveler who chases each of many tequila shots with a seltzer, U.S. farm policy consists of comically clashing impulses likely to result in a nasty hangover. The Department of Agriculture doles out substantial subsidies each year to entice fa ..read more
Visit website
Ethanol is just comically inefficient solar energy
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Tom Philpott
2M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 6.4 million pageviews per month The New Republic For all the backbiting and vitriol, the main candidates in the recent Iowa GOP presidential caucus agreed on a lot of issues, from immigration crackdowns (wonderful) to federal incentives for electric cars (evil). But no topic brought them into more violent consensus than the sanctity of federal support for corn-based ethanol. The heart of the nation’s corn belt, Iowa is the Saudi Arabia of that industry; and Donald Trump and his longshot rivals all vowed to maintain the federal policies that prop it up.&n ..read more
Visit website
Can $3 billion persuade Black farmers to trust the USDA?
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Amy Mayer
2M ago
Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 44m weekly audience across platforms NPR The Biden administration’s $3.1 billion Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program hopes to convince farmers and ranchers to adopt practices that will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in the ground. It also seeks to make amends for a century of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the grants. In its program description, USDA said Black, Native, and other “historically underserved” farmers needed to be a key part of all projects in the ..read more
Visit website
Buzzkill
Food and Environment Reporting Network
by Dan Charles
3M ago
This article is part of FERN’s series Switchyard-FERN Special Food Issue 2023 Buzzkill By Dan Charles,  December 18, 2023 What good is beef? By Siddhartha Deb,  December 11, 2023 Tell me why the watermelon grows By Jori Lewis,  December 4, 2023 A conversation with The Sioux Chef By Theodore Ross,  November 30, 2023 Tom Colicchio: A chef’s journey By Tom Colicchio,  November 16, 2023 Three o’clock in the morning, I’d wake to the smell of peppers and onions frying, my grandfather in the kitchen. Then the sound of sizzling, him adding eggs for the sandwiches we ..read more
Visit website

Follow Food and Environment Reporting Network on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR