Share this This Story’s Impact 200,000 print circulation Bloomberg Businessweek Near the end of 1991, the residents of Bugøynes, then a village of about 300 people in Norway’s Arctic north, ran an ad in the national newspaper Dagbladet, begging somebody to relocate them en masse. Cod and other whitefish, once Bugøynes’ bread and butter, were disappearing, and no one was quite sure why. The hamlet’s only fish plant had closed years earlier. The local fishing industry had essentially collapsed, leaving the villagers near the Russian border stuck with few ways to earn a living. “The t ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 1.3 million monthly web readers. 2 million social users reached. The Nation Do nations have the right to determine their own food policies? Can they make laws to safeguard domestic agriculture, public health, the environment, and the genetic integrity of the national diet? If sovereignty means anything, the answer to these questions is yes. Defending food supplies is an ancient cornerstone of the social contract, one enshrined in 21st century trade pacts including the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA. In December 2023, Mexican Presi ..read more

Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 8 million monthly web readers. 2 million monthly social users. Mother Jones Dostie Farm, an organic dairy in Fairfield, Maine, was thriving until one day in October 2020 when owner Egide Dostie Jr. got a call from Stonyfield, his exclusive buyer. Something was off with the farm’s milk: Tests had found that it contained three times the state’s allowable level of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, one of the class of “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. “We called bullshit,” Dostie remembers. PFAS contamination had recently been found at two other Maine dairy fa ..read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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