The post Our Summer 2025 Food and Farming Book Guide appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Much change is underway on the food and agriculture front, to put it mildly. But it’s also summer, a time to step back, relax, and recharge. Toward that end, we at Civil Eats offer our annual summer book guide. These 23 new or forthcoming titles run the gamut, from big-picture examinations of food-system issues and food philosophies to histories, memoirs, and cookbooks. This year, we’ve included two illustrated titles, too: a graphic memoir about the American ginseng industry and an illustrated children’s book about the life of restaurateur Cecilia Chiang.
We’re always looking for books that propose solutions to challenges in the food system, and this year we’re recommending several, including a guidebook to saving the planet, a collection of life lessons from chef and restaurateur José Andrés, and a look at what we can learn from the lives of honeybees. Happy reading!
A Banquet for Cecilia: How Cecilia Chiang Revolutionized Chinese Food in America
By Julie Leung and Melissa Iwai
“Imagine you are little Cecilia Chiang, the seventh daughter in a large and wealthy Chinese family,” begins this captivating children’s book about the restaurateur who transformed Chinese food in America. In a series of delicate and charming illustrations, we watch the blossoming of a gastronome: tiny Cecilia peering into the family kitchen, entranced by the sizzling of hot woks and smells of fried garlic, tangy vinegar, and soy sauce—and, moments later, nibbling a soup dumpling with rapt concentration.
In just a few dozen pages, author Julie Leung and illustrator Melissa Iwai take us through the events of Chiang’s dramatic life. They show her fleeing Beijing in 1943 as the Japanese invaded, walking 700 miles west with her sister to Chongquing (and discovering regional foods along the way); escaping the Chinese Civil War to live in Tokyo, where she started her first restaurant; and moving to San Francisco, where she opened her life’s triumph, the Mandarin.
At a time when Chinese food mostly meant cheap, forgettable chop suey, Chiang introduced America to a dazzling menu of authentic regional Chinese dishes from her childhood, like twice-cooked pork, beggar’s chicken, and tea-smoked duck—many vividly described and pictured in this book’s pages. Cecilia Chiang died five years ago, at age 100, and her life has been well documented in the press and in her own memoirs. A Banquet for Cecilia finds a new, surprisingly intimate way to tell her story. It is also a powerful, joyful reminder—especially at this moment—of how immigrants have enriched our country.
—Margo True
Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build A Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs
By José Andrés
Spanish-American chef and restaurateur José Andrés is known the world over for unrelenting relief efforts via his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, which serves chef-prepared meals to people impacted by natural disasters and during humanitarian crises.
But above all, he’s a cook—a fundamentally human role, he says, that requires an immense level of adaptability. “To survive and thrive, to change the world around you, you need the skills to adapt in a crisis, to take a different turn in life,” he writes. That’s a central tenet of his guiding philosophy and the countless hard-learned life lessons he shares in his latest book. Many of his snackable suggestions—Control Your Fire, Get Out of the Frying Pan, Don’t Burn Yourself—sound like advice for aspiring chefs. In reality, these are tips for all of us, about taking risks, creating community, and nourishing our world.
He accompanies this advice with endearing anecdotes about the accomplishments, mistakes, and embarrassments that shaped him, from his childhood in Spain and his early restaurant days in Washington, D.C. to his commendable foray into global philanthropy. A powerful collection of teachable moments from one of the food world’s most influential figures, this book is ideal for those looking for inspiration both in the kitchen and in the world today.
—Kate Nelson
Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes From the Edge of the World
By Art Cullen
It’s easy to forget that as recently as 30 years ago, supporting the expansion of the industrial animal farms that now dominate certain sectors of Iowa’s farmland grid was not a winning political position. Art Cullen remembers. In fact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning publisher of Iowa’s Storm Lake Times Pilot traces the state’s transformation back much further. He recalls a time of seed saving, when a small farm could feed a family; recounts legendary environmentalist Aldo Leopold foreshadowing the consequences of the Green Revolution-based shift toward farm efficiencies; and progresses to an entire state’s river system befouled by manure.
Cullen’s book explores those themes in what reads like a series of letters the author is writing to his old friend Marty. Through personal reflections, tangents, and the steady (and sometimes meandering) unspooling of arguments, he paints a picture of what happens when domination—over animals, fertile landscapes, Native people, and the immigrant workers who feed us—drives agricultural and community development.
The book invites readers to see the decline of their towns and landscapes not through the distorted lens of the politicians who court them for votes and profit, but by looking squarely at and connecting true threats: corporate consolidation, the exploitation of working people, and a climate warming fast enough to end it all. “We are left with little choice but to change before we burn ourselves up,” he writes. Surprisingly, from his little corner of Northwest Iowa, he still sees a path toward making that happen.
—Lisa Held
Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family
By Jill Damatac
In this unflinching memoir, writer Jill Damatac chronicles the indignities she and her family endured as undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Along the way, she deftly braids narratives about Filipino foodways, mythology, and histories of colonial rule with more personal episodes—of domestic and sexual violence and her three suicide attempts.
The term “dirty kitchen” describes the partly outdoor common space found in Filipino homes where tasks like big-batch cooking, butchering, and fire roasting occur. As a home cook, Damatac prepares Filipino dishes almost ceremoniously: Her arms burn making lengua kare-kare “the old way,” which requires a physicality rooted in a time before this type of meat and peanut stew was made with instant seasoning mixes. For her, preparing and eating Filipino meals was a means of survival “in a land that cared nothing for us.” She opens each chapter with a list of ingredients for the Filipino dishes that follow—bayah wine for pinikpikan (a chicken or duck specialty) and eggs for spamsilog (fried Spam, garlic rice, and eggs), for example—and weaves commentary throughout.
Dirty Kitchen unpacks the colonial oppression that decimated the Philippines, and the resulting moral injury that for generations has manifested as shame and a sense of inferiority. “So much of what is indigenous to the Philippines has been destroyed, overwritten in the blood of battle and occupation,” she writes.
I grew up in a quiet Detroit suburb, a daughter of Filipino immigrants. Although the memoir’s lacerating images of violence struck me with sorrow, its testaments to Filipino resilience were nourishing. Through the lens of food, Damatac has written a revelation for children of the Filipino diaspora searching for unsanitized answers about their heritage. But she has also created valuable reference for anyone invested in Indigenous food traditions and critiques of colonialism.
—Eleanore Catolico
The Fish Counter
By Marion Nestle
Years ago, when I was working at a lifestyle magazine, I helped put together a shopper’s guide to sustainable, healthful seafood. As we learned more about the dire state of our fisheries, we realized we were only skimming the surface of a labyrinthine topic. So, when news came this year that the redoubtable Marion Nestle, our country’s leading nutritionist (and a Civil Eats advisor), was releasing a short book on how to shop for seafood, I was delighted—and then, as I dove into the book, also unsettled by the true scope of the problem.
Nestle is known for the depth of her research and for not mincing words. Within the first few pages of The Fish Counter—a standalone excerpt from her revised edition of What to Eat Now, coming this fall—she states: “To make intelligent choices of fish at supermarkets, you have to know more than you could possibly imagine about nutrition, fish toxicology, and the life cycle and ecology of fish—the kind of fish it is, what it eats, where it was caught, and whether it was farmed or wild.
If you are at all concerned about environmental, labor, or human rights issues, you will also want to know how the fish was raised and caught, and whether its stocks are sustainable.”
Nestle then plunges us into those chilly waters, showing us the full extent of our seafood troubles in methodical detail, layering in history, science, and, especially, politics. Lack of political will prevents us from grasping many of these problems, she reveals: Seafood industry lobbyists exert influence on the dietary guidelines, for instance, and neither our government nor the fish industry are willing to confront the main source of methylmercury in our seafood: coal-burning power plants.
So what are we seafood lovers to do? This book deters us from buying most fish, but spurs us to fight for them. In the end, Nestle says, our best path is to educate ourselves and then take action. Tell our congressional representatives what we think. Join a fish advocacy group and work collectively for change. “Like so many other food issues,” she says, “safe and sustainable fisheries demand democracy in action.”
—Margo True
Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet
By Stuart Gillespie
Our global food system was originally designed to prevent famine by mass-producing cheap calories, but it is now a driving force of worldwide obesity and undernutrition, as well as the climate crisis. For 40 years, health and nutrition expert Stuart Gillespie has been fighting to transform the system through his work with the United Nations and the International Food Policy Research Institute.
In his new book, he unpacks how our current food system is working against us—to the benefit of billion-dollar corporations. In examining the current global malnutrition crisis, Gillespie describes how colonialism, the Cold War, and corporate capitalism shaped the food system to prioritize cheap, uniform food with little nutritional value, leading to undernutrition and obesity. He dissects how political, economic, and social structures perpetuate the conditions of malnutrition and exposes how transnational corporations profit off keeping people sick.
They prey on vulnerable marginalized groups, he explains, and they interfere with policies and research that bolster positive change—all while investing in remedies for the ill effects of their own products. For example, he writes, Nestlé sells multivitamins to be taken after bariatric surgery for obesity, and several “Big Food” corporations, such as Kraft Heinz, also own diet companies.
Though dense at times, the book thoughtfully weaves in case studies that Gillespie has both researched and witnessed first-hand, making for a riveting and eye-opening read. Taking lessons from successful and failed public-health policy interventions throughout history, Gillespie lays out a playbook to challenge the power of “Big Food.”
He calls on governments to create policies that reduce corporate control; on researchers to keep studying nutrition without corporate influence; and on individuals to pressure their governments to act. In doing so, Gillespie seeks to radically transform the power dynamics of the food system so we can live in a more equitable and nutritious world.
—Riley Ramirez
Ginseng Roots: A Memoir
By Craig Thompson
In the 1980s, farmers in the tiny community of Marathon, Wisconsin, cultivated the most American ginseng in the entire world, which they sold primarily to the Chinese market for medicinal purposes. For 10 summers of his childhood, Craig Thompson worked in the Marathon ginseng fields. He used the dollar per hour he earned to purchase comic books, which fueled his love of drawing and eventual career as a graphic novelist.
In Ginseng Roots, a reported memoir in graphic novel form, Thompson examines the medicinal plant that shaped his early life. He shares both the 300-year history of ginseng and his own relationship with the plant, which is tied up with his experience growing up working-class in the rural Midwest.
He revisits the farmers who once employed him, tells the story of a Hmong boy who worked in the fields alongside him, interviews big-shot growers at the Wisconsin Ginseng Festival, and even journeys to Taiwan, China, and South Korea to examine the central role of the plant in those cultures.
In tones of black, gray, and red, Thompson’s exquisitely drawn book is a visual masterpiece that tells a sweeping story of globalization, industrial agriculture, immigration, labor, class, and religion—all through the lens of the strange, humanoid ginseng root. Thompson also weaves in his experiences reporting the story, as he manages a painful health hand condition, navigates the aging of his evangelical parents, considers his relationship with his siblings, and ponders place and the meaning of home. In all, Ginseng Roots is personal, educational, and very worth a read.
—Christina Cooke
How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy
By Julian Baggini
In How the World Eats, Julian Baggini warns against romanticizing food systems of the past. We can learn lessons about farming, hunting and gathering, and animal husbandry, but our food system has evolved over centuries—or even millennia—and it’s time to move forward with a different perspective. Baggini argues that changing the food system to be good for the planet and its inhabitants requires a global food philosophy, or a set of principles and values where everyone adopts a unified set of clear, defined principles. Drawing from myriad examples of environmentally and culturally responsible forms of agriculture (e.g. regenerative agriculture, pastoral husbandry, and sustainable intensification), Baggini believes we can take an all-of-the-above approach.
Baggini starts by looking at the evolution of various aspects of our food system, including farming methods, labor practices, animal husbandry and processing, and technology. Then he recommends seven global food principles to guide how our food systems should function, from growing practices to government policies.
These principles include approaches like circularity, which looks at regenerative cycles of inputs and outputs; the seemingly obvious food-centric principle, which focuses on whole foods versus commodities; and plurality, which accepts that there are many ways to grow food. The latter is one Baggini emphasizes throughout: We must find the good in every approach, even industrial agriculture and gene editing. While he is critical of certain methods, he’s not willing to throw them out wholesale.
Baggini acknowledges that since it’s hard to disagree with any of the principles, they could seem “too woolly, too thin.” Yet if we were to adopt them on a wide scale, he argues, they would be nothing short of transformative.
—Elizabeth Doerr
How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Food
By Vaclav Smil
I am not much of a data person, but I am a big fan of big ideas to solve big problems. So the title alone drew me to Vaclav Smil’s latest book. A professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, Smil has built his body of work around data-driven research and analysis that tackles big questions; his 2022 book How the World Really Works earned high praise from Bill Gates and others.
In How to Feed the World, Smil begins with an exhaustive exploration of how we got here—including why we eat certain plants and animals and not others, and why the global food system doesn’t get the same economic and policy support as, say, technology supply chains. If you like data, this will likely interest you.
Smil lays solutions out at a very high level. He names many that we have covered for years: Reduce food waste, eat less beef, eat meat that is more humanely and sustainably produced, and support more efficient and productive agriculture in China and especially Africa. He also debunks what he sees as false or non-scalable solutions: organic farming, perennial crops, GMOs, and lab-grown meat.
But in explaining what would work, we’re left with only the broadest strokes of suggestions. “All countries need to minimize wholesale [food] storage and distribution losses,” is one prescription for reducing food waste, for instance. And climate change gets very little mention, which strikes me as potentially upending any dataset Smil is working with. In the end, Smil has given readers a bunch of data and a few suggestions as to what to do next, but the book falls far short of truly helping feed a world with 2 billion more people and a rapidly destabilizing climate.
—Matthew Wheeland
The Modern Huntsman Cookbook: Recipes and Stories Earned in Wild Places
By the Editors of Modern Huntsman Magazine
In December 1960, the writer Wallace Stegner penned an argument for wilderness, to help bolster desperate preservation efforts then underway. Stegner argued that the idea of wilderness itself had immeasurable value. “We simply need that wild country available to us,” he wrote, “even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.”
In its own subtle way, The Modern Huntsman Cookbook: Recipes and Stories Earned in Wild Places, makes a similar argument. Amid its recipes for wild boar ragú, glazed deer loin, and surf clam ceviche, offered by an assortment of hunters, fishers, and outdoor chefs, the book offers insightful essays, including from the naturalist Rick Bass. Each contributor argues for a way of life that would be (sadly) unsustainable for an entire modern society to undertake, even while its continuation feels somehow essential.
The editors have sought here to elevate hunting into something beyond abstraction, to connect it to culinary art. Here you’ll find meticulous guidance on building a fire, on choosing cooking equipment for flame and ember, and recipes that seek to deeply connect us to our food. Anyone with access to wild food will appreciate the recipes, accompanying essays, and rich, illustrative photography. Just as we need the idea of the wild available to us, we need the idea of the hunt—and, through books like this, a way to approach the edge and look in.
—Brian Calvert
My (Half) Latinx Kitchen: Half Recipes, Half Stories, All Latin American
By Kiera Wright-Ruiz
Among first-generation American cookbook authors, food writer Kiera Wright-Ruiz brings a unique perspective. Instead of sharing recipes passed down from her parents, her book reflects multiple traditions from the many people who raised her: an Ecuadorian grandfather, a Cuban foster mom, and a Mexican grandmother, among others.
Wright-Ruiz divides the book into chapters that are each devoted to someone whose cooking has impacted her. She prefaces each recipe with an entertaining origin story and supplements the book with moving essays. Some are delightful, like one about a day in the life of her aging grandfather, a former luchador (wrestler) with a penchant for fresh crabs and churrasco (grilled meat). Others are challenging, including her story about reading her foster-care logs for the first time to learn more about her placement with Cuban foster parents. Recipes range from soups and stews to fresh salsas, horchatas (sweet non-alcoholic beverages), desserts, and more. I found the tortillas de yuca, made with grated yuca and queso fresco, addictive. The seco de pollo, a chicken and tomato stew, does indeed bring “the ultimate feeling of coziness” that’s promised in the headnote.
Wright-Ruiz’s work is fueled by an open and honest drive to pay homage to the people who shaped her culinary identity, and it’s this sometimes joyful, sometimes complicated search for connection that makes her book a gratifying read for anyone hungry for a taste of Latinx food and community.
—Laura Candler
Planetary Eating: The Hidden Links between Your Plate and Our Cosmic Neighborhood
By Gidon Eshel
In an age of ephemeral hot takes flickering across social media feeds, Gidon Eshel’s Planetary Eating stands out like a stone monument to old-fashioned scholarship. The Bard College professor’s treatise is exhaustively researched—its bibliography alone features over 680 entries and takes up nearly a sixth of the book—and he readily admits that it’s “not everybody’s idea of a light read.” But for those with the patience to wade through this weighty tome, Eshel provides a comprehensive review of the evidence for and against grass-fed cattle production, grounding the debate in the context of climate science.
After careful consideration, he concludes that, in nearly all cases, one of the best planet-saving decisions an eater can make is to give up beef. “Forgo beef, and your resource needs drop two- to tenfold,” he declares. “Such huge impacts, achieved by fairly simple personal choices over which you have complete control right now, are hard to emulate on any other environmental realm.”
—Daniel Walton
The Quinoa Bust: The Making and Unmaking of an Andean Miracle Crop
By Emma McDonell
For much of its modern history, quinoa was a little-known crop, grown in the Andes of Bolivia and Peru and underappreciated by the rest of the world. But after a gradual series of introductions into the international market in the early 2000s, the Andean grain enjoyed a global boom, heralded as a superfood, high in protein and fiber, and a tool for fighting malnutrition.
Crop prices tripled from 2006 to 2013, and the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa. But in the years following, the grain saw a gradual yet consistent decline because of fluctuations in the market and shifts in where the crop was produced, from mostly Puno, Peru, to regions all over the world.
Anthropologist Emma McDonell’s new book traces the rise and fizzle of quinoa, exploring how an unknown crop found itself in the global spotlight.
The early chapters focus on the scientists and researchers who identified quinoa’s potential as a superfood and the scientists, researchers, and government agencies that promoted the crop and made it a hit.
The book then delves into the unfortunate consequences of this transformation. Puno’s farmers, who could have reaped major economic benefits, instead found themselves competing on a global scale with agribusinesses that began mass-producing quinoa. McDonell’s book, which relies on ethnographic research and interviews, is informative and well-structured, touching upon the social, ecological, technological and political aspects of boom and bust. The narrative enables a specific examination of global capitalism and the unintended consequences of manipulating food paradigms—and might inspire anyone who eats to be more appreciative of what is on their plate.
—Amy Wu
Regenerating Earth: Farmers Working with Nature to Feed our Future
By Kelsey Timmerman
In the face of the dual destructive forces of climate change and industrial agriculture, it’s often easy to feel demoralized. But in this hopeful book, journalist Kelsey Timmerman, who lives in rural Indiana, reminds us that regenerative agriculture—which prioritizes building soil, sequestering carbon, and promoting ecological diversity—has devotees throughout the U.S. and around the world.
From farmer Mark Shepard in southwestern Wisconsin—who practices a form of permaculture he dubs “the STUN method” (Sheer Total Utter Neglect)—to Leshinka, a Maasai Mara herder who pursues holistic management at Kenya’s Enonkishu Conservancy, farmers are proving to their neighbors that growing and raising food in a regenerative way not only feeds their community but provides a more reliable source of income than do commodity crops.
Along Timmerman’s travels, we meet other visionaries. This includes Lee DeHaan at the Land Institute in Kansas, who is working to make Kernza, a trademarked wheatgrass, into an economically viable food crop, and Celestine Otieno, an activist in Kenya who counsels women on growing a diversity of non-commodity food crops. We also learn about a group of activists on Kaua’i who forced Dupont-Pioneer and Syngenta to disclose their use of restricted pesticides, leading to a ban of atrazine and chlorpyrifos across Hawai’i.
Timmerman acknowledges that regenerative agriculture is not a quick fix. The market for Kernza isn’t dependable yet, for example, and using Allan Savory’s holistic management and rotational grazing methods can be a hard sell in Kenya, where drought and desertification are rampant and skepticism of old-new ways of grazing is high.
In the end, though, he makes a strong case that regenerative agriculture in all its many guises is not only a boon for the climate but can, at the same time, be profitable for farmers and ranchers who practice it.
—Hannah Wallace
The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life
By Helen Whybrow
Helen Whybrow’s The Salt Stones is a deeply personal meditation on land, life, and the moral complexity of raising animals for food and fiber. A writer, farmer, and educator based in Vermont, Whybrow draws on decades of experience tending people, pastures, and grazing sheep. Her storytelling is both tender and unflinching, offering a portrait of farm life that honors the rhythms of nature while acknowledging the emotional weight of living among animals destined to die for us.
In one beautifully haunting moment, she recounts running her hand along the warm flank of an animal she’d raised since its birth, conscious that soon she’d be placing cuts of its flesh on her family’s table. What makes this book so powerful is its refusal to separate love from loss. Whybrow invites readers into the intimate, often uneasy space where care, labor, and death intersect, without offering easy answers. She reshapes our understanding of stewardship and belonging, making The Salt Stones a luminous and necessary addition to the literature of food and farming.
—Jonnah Perkins
Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie
By Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty
The North American prairie boasts one of the most biologically rich ecosystems in the world—and one of the most overlooked. Shortgrass and tallgrass prairies can support a stunning diversity of wildlife, including bison, prairie dogs, and eagles; hundreds of butterfly species; and more than 1,600 native grasses and flowers. They can also sequester enormous amounts of carbon.
Unfortunately, these ecosystems have been nearly wiped out, starting 200 years ago as European settlers transformed the Midwest into a super-producer of corn and soybeans. The tallgrass prairie once covered millions of acres from Texas to Minnesota, and now just one percent remains.
Journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty recount the massive ecological and historical evolution of the American prairie. Their focus ranges from pre-colonial times, when up to 60 million bison roamed the landscape, to our current era, dominated and polluted by industrial farming practices.
We hear from ranchers, entomologists, geographers, water works departments, and tribal leaders—each helping explain the value of the prairie and what gets lost when it’s plowed under.
We also learn about the people and nonprofits leading conservation efforts to restore prairie ecosystems, like Practical Farmers of Iowa, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, and the Buffalo Nations Grasslands Alliance. Sea of Grass is an engaging read and a rallying cry for a remarkable ecosystem and the people who have devoted their lives to it.
—Laura Candler
Serving the Public: The Good Food Revolution in Schools, Hospitals and Prisons
By Kevin Morgan
We are what we eat, the old adage goes, but some people—including prisoners, hospital patients, and children receiving school-provided food—have very little control over their diets. In Serving the Public, Kevin Morgan analyzes various successes and failures when it comes to feeding these particularly vulnerable populations.
A professor of governance and development at the University of Cardiff in Wales, Morgan examines recent and ongoing efforts to source healthy, nutritious, and sustainable meals to often-overlooked groups. Using case studies largely drawn from the United Kingdom (but with some examples from the U.S. and Sweden), the book offers success stories alongside examples of efforts that failed. We learn about the enduring revitalization of school food in Sweden’s third-largest city as well as the rise of the loathed Nutraloaf, fed to prisoners in the U.S.
Morgan acknowledges pervasive issues such as regional and national politics that often thwart real progress, the outsize impact of various lobbying groups, and the challenges of supply chain logistics. Finally, the book presents fascinating tidbits of history, including a look at the link between food and several notorious prison riots.
“Food is a common denominator of so much social and political activity around the world,” Morgan writes. Serving the Public deserves to be on the reading list of anyone interested in the interconnectedness of diet, health, and society.
—Katherine Kornei
Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War
By Hawa Hassan
“We who experience violent or invasive conflict in our communities and daily lives are more than our travails,” writes Somali-American chef and James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Hawa Hassan, who was displaced to a refugee camp in Kenya at just five years old.
A must-read addition to your library, her cookbook demonstrates love, affection, and respect for its subject matter, and covers a wide swath of territory, from Afghanistan to Yemen. Each beautifully photographed chapter opens with a brief timeline of the historical events and context surrounding the country’s conflict and an invitation to think beyond stereotypes. The book highlights El Salvador, for example, as a country rich in history with generous people and outstanding food despite the civil war that devastated it from 1980 to 1992 in the wake of a far-right coup.
In addition to eating at the tables of ordinary families and in a variety of restaurants and food stalls, Hassan spent a year reporting this cookbook. She interviewed chefs, importers, and other food professionals in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Lebanon, and Liberia—as well as members of various diasporas in the U.S.—to offer a collection of rich profiles.
The accompanying recipes—like a delicious ground-peanut soup from Liberia and borani banjan (a stewed eggplant dish with garlicky yogurt sauce) from Afghanistan—are all clearly-written and accessible. They reflect culinary traditions, preserved through hardship and displacement, that anchor the diaspora in a sense of place and connection with home. Some also illustrate the influences of colonialism, as is the case with om ali, a bread pudding from Egypt that references European cuisine while integrating Middle Eastern ingredients.
You’ll close this book with a heightened appreciation of the power of setting a place at the table and sharing cultural traditions, no matter where you are.
—s.e. smith
Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick
By Murray Carpenter
I grew up in a family of Coca-Cola drinkers. One of my brothers drank a couple of 2-liter bottles every day for years, and I couldn’t help but suspect that his stomach problems were related to his soda habit. That curiosity led me to Sweet and Deadly.It’s a fascinating book that makes two main arguments: that Coca-Cola is a significant contributor to chronic disease and that the company uses its well-oiled disinformation machine to obscure the soda’s health risks.Author Murray Carpenter traces how the sugar industry’s early PR efforts to influence nutrition policy and public opinion laid the groundwork for a PR playbook adopted by the tobacco industry and Coca-Cola: sow doubt, fund front groups that defend its interests, hire “experts” to back up its claims, and spend lavishly to defeat legislation like soda taxes.
Unlike Big Tobacco, Coca-Cola has been winning the PR war for years, dating back to 1911, when the company successfully defended itself in court against charges including that the drink was addictive and marketed to kids.Since then, soda consumption has skyrocketed while public health has declined. Researchers have associated regular consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages with elevated (cardiovascular disease) mortality, among other health impacts. Today, unhealthy Americans outnumber healthy ones, with two-thirds being obese or overweight.Coca-Cola isn’t entirely to blame for all of this, of course, but it is undoubtedly a fixture in our unhealthy American diet. As for my family, I am relieved that they have scaled back their soda consumption for health reasons. But every once in a while, they still can’t resist reaching for a bottle of Coke.
—Tilde Herrera
The Italian Summer Kitchen: Timeless Recipes for La Dolce Vita
By Cathy Whims with Illustrations by Kate Lewis
When chef Cathy Whims opened Nostrana in 2005, she introduced diners in Portland, Oregon, to the glorious simplicity of regional Italian fare. From the beginning, she showed her commitment to local, regenerative agriculture: succulent tomatoes from nearby 47th Avenue Farm, Chester blackberries from Ayers Creek, and potatoes from Prairie Creek Farm.
Now we can bring some of Whims’ magic to our own kitchens with her first cookbook: The Italian Summer Kitchen. In this delightful guide, with illustrations by artist Kate Lewis, Whims makes iconic Italian dishes like fried squash blossoms and pollo alla Romana accessible to home cooks. Though not a Nostrana cookbook, per se, a few of its signature dishes do appear here. Fans of the restaurant will be thrilled to have recipes for the summer fruit crisp with almond cream and its signature radicchio-Caesar mash-up—inspired, Whims reveals, by a salad she had at Locanda Veneta in Los Angeles.
The cookbook is the perfect gift for the gardener in your life. Recipes are well-suited to summer’s backyard abundance. There are a dozen that use zucchini and their blossoms. Others make use of dandelion greens, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. Even fruit gets a starring role—from a savory strawberry and basil risotto to a cantaloupe confettura (jam).
—Hannah Wallace
Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters
By Jennifer Clapp
A combine harvester slicing through a monoculture cornfield is the epitome of a well-oiled machine. So too, argues Jennifer Clapp, is the entire array of economic, technological, and political factors that have converged to dominate the world’s agriculture. Through the lens of North American grain farming, the University of Waterloo professor dissects how companies initially commodified key farm inputs like seeds and fertilizers, then used their early advantages to secure lasting, outsized market power.
Titans of Industrial Agriculture is particularly illuminating on the concept of lock-ins, where the adoption of one new technology begets reliance on another: the weed-killer glyphosate and “Roundup Ready” corn, engineered to survive glyphosate, for example, are both produced by Bayer.
Clapp’s analysis clearly shows how these dynamics continue into the present day, including seed companies’ efforts to guarantee control of intellectual property around gene editing—acquiring startups, exclusive licenses, and patents to produce crops that resist herbicides made by the same companies. She proposes diversity as an antidote to this dominance, as promoted by antitrust reform and other public policy. Only when small-scale companies and farmers can compete on fair terms, Clapp suggests, will a widespread transformation of the food system be possible.
—Daniel Walton
Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook
Edited by Nick Mucha, Jessica Flint, and Patrick Thomas
A warming planet threatens everything we need to live: our food, our water, and the people around us. Yet any progress in the U.S. is likely to be delayed (if not already rolled back) as the second Trump administration refuses to confront climate change. Facing so little action on such an urgent crisis, one can easily spiral into existential eco-anxiety. That’s where Patagonia’s Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook aims to step in. Through curated essays, case studies, and how-to’s from dozens of contributors, the environmentally conscious apparel brand (which also admits it’s impossible for any company to be truly sustainable) wants to inspire readers to “double down on your passion”—and tackle our greatest crises.
At times, the book reads like it’s geared for leaders in the nonprofit world, rather than being a guide for the everyday person looking to take a leap into activism. Nevertheless, the collection’s success stories and practical knowledge gives readers insight on how to make change and navigate the hurdles that inevitably come with it. Reporter Jessica Flint explains how a program targeting the treatment of porters on Mount Kilimanjaro led to better working conditions, for example, and attorney Deepa Padmanabha describes how corporations and powerful people use lawsuits to attack First Amendment rights and silence any resistance. Justice is the work of very determined people who fight for their rights, and inspiration and guidance can jumpstart action—the key ingredient for progress.
—Sam Delgado
The Wisdom of the Hive: What Honeybees Can Teach Us about Collective Wellbeing
By Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine
Save the bees. The phrase has become ubiquitous, appearing on canvas bags, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs. In The Wisdom of the Hive, though, authors Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine invert such thinking with a question: “What if the bees are here to save us?” As an indicator species that reflects the health of the broader ecosystem, bees reflect the wellbeing (or illness) of life on our planet. The authors, both equity educators who keep bees themselves, remind us: “The bees know that everything is connected, that there is no separation. It is us humans who have forgotten.”
While many books have been written about the ties between humanity and honeybees—without whom our lives would be severely nutritionally impoverished, as their pollinating services help many food crops bear fruit—The Wisdom of the Hive is unique in how it turns to the bees as a source of knowledge and their hives as a model for society. Drawing on their experiences as beekeepers, Johnson and Burtaine invite deep self-reflection through activities, meditations, and questions that seek to help us reconnect with our bodies, other people, and the natural world to which we belong.
—Elena Valeriote
Our Recent Books Coverage
Akeem Keeps Bees! A Close-Up Look at the Honey Makers and Pollinators of Sankofa Farms
By Kamal Bell with Akeem Bell
A North Carolina farmer and his young son offer a practical and joyful illustrated guide to beekeeping.
Coastal Harvest: Fish – Forage – Feast
By Taku Kondo
This book is both a culmination of the author’s years of YouTube videos and a beautifully photographed and illustrated cookbook, with detailed instructions for sushi, sashimi, whole-fish cooking, and more.
Our South: Black Food Through My Lens
By Ashleigh Shanti
A debut cookbook from ‘Top Chef’ alum Ashleigh Shanti features recipes from five micro-regions of the American South.
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]]>The post Civil Eats Wins a James Beard Award for Coverage of Farmworker Heat Protections appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>On Saturday night, in Chicago, surrounded by peers in the food and journalism worlds, Civil Eats won a 2025 James Beard Foundation Media Award for excellence. Former Staff Reporter Grey Moran’s deeply reported story “Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution” came in first in the Health and Wellness category.
The Beard awards are widely considered to be the Oscars of the food world. The awards were established more than 30 years ago to honor the country’s top restaurants, chefs, cookbook authors, broadcasters, and journalists, and grew so large that the Media Awards is now a separate event, recognizing cookbooks, television shows, podcasts, print and online media, and more.
Moran’s incisive piece about Florida’s ban of farmworker heat protections explored the Fair Food Program (FFP), a successful grassroots effort to implement alternative protections for Florida farmworkers.
Former Staff Reporter Grey Moran accepts a James Beard Foundation Media Award on Saturday for their win in the Health and Wellness category.
We’ve long reported on the FFP, an initiative of the state’s legendary Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which helps build equity, respect, and transparency into the food supply chain. The farmworkers draft their own workplace safety rules, reflecting the hazards they face in the workplace, and they can report any violations to a third-party council that is available around the clock. Consumers who buy food with the FFP certification can rest assured that those farmworkers have a say in implementing and defending their own rights as the threat of extreme heat deepens.
As Florida’s ban on worker heat protections went into effect, our story helped build momentum for this groundbreaking solution—not just in Florida, but anywhere workers lack legal protections from extreme heat and other hazards.
Following publication of Moran’s piece, a wave of articles extolling the Fair Food Program began to appear, including in Modern Farmer, NPR, an NBC affiliate in Southwest Florida, USA Today, and the national Latino radio network Radio Bilingue. Moran also discussed the story on two radio programs: KALW Public Media and Food Sleuth Radio.
The Civil Eats team was also nominated in the Columns and Newsletters category for The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. We create and send one of these mini-magazines every six weeks or so, building each around a single theme, with deeply reported feature stories, follow-ups on previously reported stories, sneak peeks at what our editors and reporters are working on, and more.
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]]>The post Civil Eats Nominated for Two James Beard Journalism Awards appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>We’re excited to report that we have been nominated for James Beard Journalism Awards in two categories:
- Columns and Newsletters, for three issues of our members-only newsletter, The Deep Dish—“Indigenous Foodways,” “Revitalizing Home Cooking,” and “Food on the Ballot” by the Civil Eats staff; and
- Health and Wellness, for “Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution” by former Staff Reporter Grey Moran.
We’re also celebrating the nomination of “Black Earth,” a profile of a North Carolina farmer that we cross-posted from The Bitter Southerner, written by Civil Eats’ Associate Editor Christina Cooke.
Columns and Newsletters
We publish a Deep Dish every six weeks or so, crafting a mini-magazine of stories around a central theme. For our small staff, it’s an all-hands-on-deck effort in addition to our regular publishing cadence. We start with a brainstorm, which arises from topics that are clearly gathering force in our food system, with implications for all of us.
Civil Eats has been nominated for two 2025 James Beard Journalism Awards.
Once we’ve settled on a topic, and created a mesh of stories that amplify and resonate with one another, we assign reporters, research photos, and identify potential art. This intense work is deeply gratifying, allowing us to go deep on a topic, and we see newsletter open rates of 80 to 90 percent—far exceeding the industry average.
For “Indigenous Foodways,” we delved more deeply into a topic we cover year-round, and invited Civil Eats contributor Kate Nelson, an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member, to guest-edit. Nelson also wrote a piece herself, about the connections between tribal food sovereignty and the Land Back movement.
Other stories touched on tribal issues in the endlessly delayed farm bill, Navajo water rights, a prized fish called the Clear Lake hitch, and an interview with ethnobotanist and food sovereignty activist Linda Black Elk. These stories, we felt, had much to teach us about Indigenous foodways and how to begin to decolonize our experiences with food and agriculture.
With “Revitalizing Home Cooking,” we enlisted a star-studded group of experts to help address many of our home cooking challenges, and in the process, help remind us that cooking can be both joyful and a meaningful way to support a good, fair, and just food system. Cookbook author Kim O’Donnel spoke to us about why cooking is the cornerstone of sustainability; we got tips on meal prep from cookbook author Nik Sharma; we went shopping with author and climate consultant Sophie Egan; we learned the best ways to preserve and store food from San Francisco’s Civic Kitchen and how to handle leftovers with writer Tamar Adler; and got inspired by some seriously ambitious dorm-room cooks.
We’re thrilled to be heading to Chicago this June for the award celebration, and to be among many other talented journalists from across the country.
We are especially glad that “Food on the Ballot” was recognized by the Beard Foundation, given the profound impact of the 2024 presidential election. The issue examined the candidates’ approaches to immigration, climate change, corporate farming, and food prices (we hosted a related member salon on the topic of inflation and groceries). We also scrutinized AcreTrader, a farm real-estate investment platform that counted then-vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance among its investors. That reporting remains among the top read stories on our site.
The elections issue was probably the longest we’ve ever published, and our members responded with enthusiastic open rates and click-throughs. Their engagement helped support our decision, this year, to launch the Civil Eats Food Policy Tracker, entirely focused on federal policy action in Washington, D.C.
We’ve also been nominated and won additional accolades for the Deep Dish from other organizations beyond the Beard Foundation. Last year, we won a 2024 Excellence in Newsletters, Single Newsletter from the Online News Association, and in 2020, we received the digital media award for best newsletter from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
Health and Wellness
Moran’s sharply observed story took place as Florida banned local heat regulations for farmworkers, including a requirement that employers provide water, shade, and breaks for workers laboring in the hot sun. The piece covered the alternative protections offered by the Fair Food Program, from the state’s legendary Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
After the story was published, more coverage followed extolling the Fair Food Program as a solution to Florida’s heat protection ban, including at NPR, an NBC affiliate in Southwest Florida, USA Today, and the national Latino radio network Radio Bilingue. Moran also discussed the story on two radio programs: KALW Public Media and Food Sleuth Radio. A few months after the article was published, the Fair Food Program was awarded a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helping it expand to more farms.
Farmworkers clear out irrigation for an okra field near Coachella, California. (Photo credit: Mario Tama, Getty Images)
“There are models like the Fair Food Program that offer a way forward even under governments that are hostile to workers,” Moran said. “I’m honored by this nomination, and also hope it shines a light on this critical model for workers’ rights.”
For “Black Earth,” about North Carolina farmer Patrick Brown’s purchase of the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved, Cooke wove family history into a lyrical story of reclaiming land and community. “Over my multiple visits to Patrick’s farm over the course of a growing season, I came to appreciate the depth of his story, which stretches back generations, and understand why people I spoke with described him as a ‘north star’ and a ‘guiding light’—someone who is finding a better way and reaching back to bring others along,” she said.
Hoping for Another Beard
This isn’t the first time Civil Eats has been nominated for or won a James Beard award. We were named Publication of the Year in 2014. Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held, Contributor Alice Driver, and Contributor Aaron Van Neste were nominated for a Beard award for excellence in investigative reporting for our 2023 series on Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation, Walanthropy. That same year, Contributor Virginia Gewin was nominated for a Beard award for excellence in health reporting on the Salton Sea.
In 2023, Cooke, former Senior Reporter Gosia Wozniacka, and Driver won a Beard Award for excellence in investigative reporting for our 2022 series on animal agriculture workers, Injured and Invisible.
We’re thrilled to be heading to Chicago this June for the award celebration, and to be among many other talented journalists from across the country. As always, we will be thinking of you, our readers—for whose support we are always grateful. Wish us luck!
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]]>Susan Desmond joins Civil Eats as its new development director. Desmond most recently served as strategic partnership manager at The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists through Report for America and Report for the World.
“Joining Civil Eats feels like a full-circle moment—combining my love of journalism with my deep commitment to food justice.”
In addition to her dedication to journalistic integrity, Desmond has a deep commitment to food justice in Atlanta, where she lives. Earlier in her career, she was the development director at Wholesome Wave Georgia, an organization focused on expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables across the state; her leadership there played a pivotal role in advancing the organization’s mission.
Desmond holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Wayne State University and a Master of Public Administration from Central Michigan University. Her expertise lies in strategic development, building partnerships, and securing funding for important initiatives.
“Joining Civil Eats feels like a full-circle moment—combining my love of journalism with my deep commitment to food justice,” Desmond said. “I’m excited to help grow support for this essential work.”
Brian Calvert has been a freelance contributing editor at Civil Eats since June 2024, and he now formally joins the team as a staff reporter and contributing editor.
“As a reader and contributing editor, I’ve long been amazed at the amount of great journalism Civil Eats produces.”
Calvert is the former editor-in-chief of High Country News, was an associate editor at Earth Island Journal, and is a former Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has worked as a media consultant, editor, writer, and radio producer in a career spanning 25 years. His work has appeared in Vox, The New York Times Magazine, Pacific Standard, and many others. He enjoys running, surfing, and (for the most part) healthy eating.
“As a reader and contributing editor, I’ve long been amazed at the amount of great journalism Civil Eats produces,” Calvert said. “And I’m stoked now to be a full-time member of the team.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Susan and Brian to our growing team at Civil Eats,” said Founder and Executive Director Naomi Starkman. “They are both seasoned professionals who will enrich our fundraising and reporting. These hires will bring Civil Eats into its next phase of growth.”
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]]>The post Building Stronger Communities Through Food Mutual Aid appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Last week, we welcomed Civil Eats members and the public to a thought-provoking and inspiring discussion on how to create and sustain food mutual aid. Our salons are usually for members only, but we felt that this inherently generous topic deserved to be shared with all interested listeners, particularly at a time when many of us might be supporting mutual aid in our communities.
Who Spoke: The event was kicked off by Civil Eats Membership Manager Kalisha Bass, with a welcome from Executive Director Naomi Starkman.
Editorial Director Margo True moderated our conversation with Katina Parker, a filmmaker and founder of Feed Durham in North Carolina, and Yasmin Ruiz, food justice co-organizer at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in Chicago.
Feed Durham is a multifaceted program that feeds hundreds of people at a time and includes produce giveaways, clothing distributions, and repair clinics. LVEJO was founded 30 years ago to fight environmental injustice in the neighborhood, has now expanded into several different food mutual aid projects.
The Overview: The conversation centered around what true community care looks like, based not on charity but on reciprocity, and how people can care for one another during difficult times. The audience included people from across the U.S., many of whom work on farms, garden programs, and food access issues. They contributed a lively stream of chats during the discussion.
Many audience members were already working to feed people in their communities, and a few were encouraged by Parker to start new local projects such as community gardens to feed more people in need. By the time the salon ended, there was a palpable energy for change in the audience, with listeners vowing to connect with one another and the speakers after the session.
Become a member today for invitations to future salons—along with other benefits that come with being a Civil Eats member.
Nuggets From the Conversation
What Is Food Mutual Aid?
- Katina Parker emphasized that mutual aid is not about traditional power structures, but about shared responsibility and collective survival, as it was in her family and community: “Growing up, there were a lot of kids, and we never went hungry. . . . Surviving wasn’t just about sharing food, it was about knowing one another. It’s what Dr. King called ‘service.’ There’s a difference between service and volunteerism. Service is something that is built into our lives, it’s a way of being, it’s a lifestyle–and volunteerism is something you pencil in on a Saturday.”
- Yasmin Ruiz of LVEJO defined mutual aid as “solidarity, as opposed to charity,” fostering empowerment and reciprocal relationships. “It’s not just you being on the receiving end, but giving back. It gives a sense of empowerment to people in the community, [and] allows us to take direct action to immediate needs we see.”
Tips for Sustaining a Food Mutual Aid Community
- Learn from elders, Indigenous communities, and immigrants. Elders are a trove of expertise, and immigrants (who are sometimes also Indigenous, as in the case of the Little Village neighborhood) hold knowledge from their homeland, including of agricultural practices.
- People on the receiving end need to be involved. Parker emphasized learning from unhoused individuals to prepare for societal disruptions, potentially including how to live outside, how the land and soil work, knowledge about weather conditions, and beyond. “Learn things from people that are different from us, particularly people who are closer to the earth. Native folks, unhoused people, veterans—they know a lot about the land.”
Turning Challenges Into Opportunities
- How to unite a group of people from disparate backgrounds into a true mutual aid community? Parker: “Unless you’re forging relationships across difference and really learning from one another, what you’re doing is what I would call ‘altruistic capitalism.’ What we need for what’s coming is to lean deeper into these relationships.”
- Programs that once supported farmers, school food sourcing, and food banks are being cut, increasing reliance on mutual aid as available resources decrease. Ruiz noted LVEJO’s community gardens produced 8.2 tons of food last year, but the demand far exceeds supply. Continuing to build local partnerships is key.
Sources of Inspiration and Strength
- Ruiz says it’s the relationships she forges with people in the community, and seeing how participating in mutual aid gives people agency and purpose. “A lot of people that have helped us are also people that have received produce and meals.”
- For Parker, it’s often her family. “My faith and the memory of how I was raised, and how so many have looked out for me along the way. Many of them are still alive, in their 70s and their 80s now. I spend a lot of time talking with them . . . . Standing on those broad shoulders is definitely what keeps me in it, and an awareness that we need people to survive.”
Expanding Mutual Aid
- Feed Durham is launching a national mutual aid network focused on rapid response and food access. “After four years of no rest, we have to find another gear and somehow dig deeper and be in the battle of our lives. . . .We have the best chance of getting the world that we’ve been fighting for right now, because things are so unstable and so unfamiliar.”
Read More About Food Mutual Aid
- Photo Essay: Standing in the Gaps With Feed Durham
- In Chicago, an Environmental Organization Feeds a Community
- Indigenous Food Reciprocity as a Model for Mutual Aid
- Op-ed: We Can Build a Better Food System Through Mutual Aid
- How a Year of Mutual Aid Fed Minneapolis
- Food is Free in a City Near You
- Op-ed: Why Those Community Fridges Won’t Solve Hunger
- Seattle’s Little Free Libraries Offer a Catalog of Collections and Connections
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]]>The post Remembering Joan Gussow appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Joan Dye Gussow, who died last Friday at age 96, was a fiercely independent thinker and food-system visionary whose ideas caught on and rippled outward. Starting in the 1970s, through her groundbreaking nutritional ecology class at Teachers College within Columbia University, and through books like The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology, she transformed our view of food from something enjoyed at the end of a fork to the entire system that created the mouthful.
Photo credit: Randy Harris, courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing
Gussow helped us understand that buying locally grown, seasonal food (and raising it ourselves, if possible) connected us to the health of the land, and to our own health, too. And because of her, we began to understand the deleterious impacts of the industrialized food system—among them depleted soil, poisoned water, and metabolic disease.
She railed at politicians for setting back progress and, as she told us in an interview, “You have to keep hope alive, you have to keep moving along the way you believe in and keep telling the truth and trying to get the word out there.”
In person, Gussow was formidable and funny, speaking her brilliant mind with candor, urging us to see what was going on and to never stop asking hard questions. Luckily, many of us have heeded her call, and in our work and our lives, we continue the conversation she began.
We asked some of Gussow’s many fans to celebrate and remember her with us. For those who would like to share memories or photos through this link, created by her friend Pam Koch, please do so.
Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Family Meal at Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns
To Joan, the professor: You changed the way we view a single strawberry and taught us to trust cows more than chemists.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the writer: Political or personal, your prose was always beautiful and unflinching.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the nutritionist: You proved that it is not merely safe, but sensible (and not merely sensible, but imperative) to keep slathering butter on all those potatoes.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the activist: On health food zealots, always a baffling irritation for you, you delivered a consistent message: Ignore them. Your vitality was daily proof of that simple wisdom.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the botanist: We valued your pawpaws as much as your raspberries. Your green thumb lifted our blue moods.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the cook and critic: You cooked up what you dug. For agribusiness adversaries, you cooked up trouble.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the mother: You have raised all these issues and along the way you’ve raised us, too. Here’s hoping we will do you proud.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
And to Joan, the hedonist: Food was your medium, but your message was a philosophy of life. You taught us something more than nutrition and agriculture—you taught us how to eat, to indulge in pleasure by way of responsibility. Thank you.
Ann Cooper, chef and founder of the Chef Ann Foundation
“Joan Gussow was truly an OG of the sustainable/
organic food movement, and an amazing thinker and educator.”
Joan Gussow was truly an OG of the sustainable/organic food movement, and an amazing thinker and educator. She spoke at the 1996 Chefs Collaborative Retreat and told the group that some “food” should just not be organic. “An organic gummy bear or an organic Twinkie, organic Eggo Toaster Waffles . . . they just shouldn’t be organic.”
I was so inspired by her idea that we shouldn’t have organic junk food that it shaped many of my thoughts on sustainability. Joan was instrumental in some of my thinking for my book Bitter Harvest, and when I went to the Ross School to build a healthy, nutritious, delicious school food program, Joan graciously gave of her time and energy to teach and educate our team. I will be forever grateful for all she did for food systems and sustainability.
Leslie Hatfield with Joan Gussow. Photo courtesy of Hatfield.
Leslie Hatfield, Senior Partnership and Outreach Advisor at GRACE Communications Foundation
Joan was brilliant, no question, but what drew me to her was her fierce honesty. Whether writing about unchecked corporate power’s impacts on diets, or her marriage and subsequent widowhood, she asked hard questions and didn’t flinch in laying out the answers. She inspired me, on both personal and professional levels, to live a more honest and authentic life.
Elizabeth Henderson, farmer and co-chair, Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association
I came to know Joan through my work as an organic farmer and as one of the first to organize a CSA [community supported agriculture system]. I was thrilled when she agreed to write the foreword to my 2000 book Sharing the Harvest. The first edition came out in 1998, when we estimated that there were about 1,000 CSAs in the U.S. By the second edition, in 2007, that number had more than doubled, and there may be as many as 7,000 today. As a pioneering advocate of buying from local organic farms, Joan instantly grasped the significance of CSAs.
In her foreword, Joan wrote:
“Across this country, a movement is spreading that acknowledges a long-ignored reality: Most of what we pay for our food goes to companies that transport, process, and market what comes off the farms, not to farmers themselves. The people who actually grow food don’t get paid enough to keep on doing it. If we hope to keep on eating, however, we need to keep farmers in business; and if we want to keep farmers in business, it’s time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start.”
Joan’s words are as urgent today as when she wrote them 28 years ago. Family-scale farms continue to go out of business, and the United States Department of Agriculture just cancelled the grant that would have enabled the CSA Innovation Network, a network of CSA networks all over the country, to support more diverse farms in creating CSAs.
I will be eternally grateful to Joan for her encouragement to me as a farmer and as a writer, and for transforming the discipline of nutrition from the reductionist academic analysis of the food on our plates into a training program for active participants in the international movement to wrest power over food from corporate industrial domination and return it to the people who eat, and do the hard and joyous work of growing healthy, nutritious food.
Photo credit: Susan Frieman, courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing
Pamela Koch, Mary Swartz Rose associate professor of nutrition and education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Joan taught her transformative course, Nutritional Ecology, in the Program in Nutrition at Teachers College, Columbia University, from 1970 to 2021. I taught with her from 2012 to 2021. Each week students received a 50–60 page packet of readings on a topic such as the “true cost (i.e., the environmental, health, and social cost) of food.” Students wrote a one-page reflection paper on the readings, which could be written as a letter to a friend. My comments are a reflection letter to you, Joan.
Dear Joan, I miss your wit, your wisdom, and how we could reflect on an old reading, such as your 1980 piece “What corporations have done to our food,” and see something totally new in today’s context. You described our industrial food system as “insane” and “absurd.” You have taught me to always speak the truth and think critically.
Case in point: The fertilizers and pesticides used on farms have to pollute our rivers, oceans, and drinking water. How could they not? The ability to ask the tough questions is what we can all do to carry your torch. This gives me hope that we can heal our ecosystem, support public health, reduce food-related chronic diseases, and treat everyone who works all along the food chain fairly and justly. Because of you, Joan, I believe we will have a better food future. We need your hope, Joan, now, more than ever.
Ellie Krieger, MS RDN, Food Network and PBS show host and James Beard award-winning cookbook author
I remember the feeling of having my mind blown open by Joan Dye Gussow’s teaching. It was like suddenly seeing in three dimensions when I had only been seeing in two before. Understanding that nutrition is much more than just nutrients–that [it] is agriculture, politics, the environment, and more–shaped my thinking about food and the work I do to this day. Thank you, Joan, for your brilliance, bravery, persistence, and for leading by example. I consider myself a product of the big, robust garden you cultivated.
Anna Lappé, author and executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food
Joan was a singular, uncompromising voice for organic and local food. I’ll always appreciate her generosity of spirit as a teacher, training countless students through her courses at Columbia Teachers College and opening her door to me personally as she took the time to help me understand food systems and the power of organic practices.
I’ll never forget interviewing her at her home in upstate New York for Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. While we looked out at her overflowing vegetable garden that stretched to the waters of the Hudson River, Joan shared her food philosophy, including turning me onto her seminal essay about a hypothetical organic Twinkie.
While serving on the National Organic Standards Board, she had penned, “Can an Organic Twinkie Be Certified?” Her answer was yes. One day, a Twinkie could very well be certified organic if 95 percent of its ingredients were. But, she was quick to note, it would not be healthy—nor would it reflect her vision of a food system defined by local, healthy, whole foods and not highly processed ones.
I loved the last words of her New York Times obituary, which sounded every bit like the Joan I had been inspired by for years: “The day I die, I want to have a black thumb from where I hit it with a hammer and scratches on my hands from pruning the roses.”
Kate MacKenzie, Executive Director of New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Food Policy
Joan Gussow has influenced my professional life more than any other. Twenty-five years ago, I started in the public health nutrition program at Teachers College, with a BS degree in Nutritional Sciences from Cornell. I often say that at Cornell, I learned everything about food after you swallow it, and everything about food before you eat it at TC, from Joan.
“Perhaps now more than ever, we have the responsibility of carrying her legacy forward, to meaningfully connect to real food for the health of our people and our environment.”
It was in her classes that I was introduced to topics like the corporate consolidation of the food system (or to even consider the words “food system”), the limits to population growth, how to feed the world, agricultural inputs like pesticides and organic practices, and the concepts of sustainability and local food.
I remember one class when she was lecturing about the number of food products on grocery store shelves, and how over time, people were made to think there was just no more time to cook. Her simple response: that we have always had 24 hours in the day, and it’s the power of marketing and industry to convince us otherwise. These issues made me deeply curious and desirous to effectuate changing the food system.
I’ve been doing that ever since graduating and I have met extraordinary leaders and visionaries throughout the U.S. and beyond. Many of those people have also been students of Joan’s. Perhaps now more than ever, we have the responsibility of carrying her legacy forward, to meaningfully connect to real food for the health of our people and our environment.
Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health emerita, New York University
I first met Joan in the late 1970s when I heard her give a talk in the Bay Area when I was teaching at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. I had never heard anyone talk about the need to link agricultural production to nutrition and health—food systems, we now call that—and it felt revelatory.
I am not alone in being inspired by her work. I have followed it with great admiration. Ahead of her time? Absolutely.
You have discovered that the food industry influences food choices? Try Joan’s “Who Pays the Piper,” from 1980.
You think food systems should be sustainable? See Joan’s “Dietary Guidelines for Sustainability,” written with Kate Clancy in 1986.
Her students at Columbia were so lucky to be in her orbit. I am beyond sad at her loss.
Raj Patel, author, activist, and research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin
Joan was so ahead of her time, I often wondered whether she thought the food movement revival a decade or two ago was just the history of the 1970s repeating, this time as farce. But she was always gracious, ready to celebrate the wins—and hurl imprecations at those who deserved them: the food industry, their shills, and the deer who ate from her garden. Recently, I re-read her classic lecture, “Women, Food, and the Survival of the Species,” plucked from the archives by Daniel Bowman Simon, and it reminded me of the abundance of her spirit, and the depth of our debt to her.
Michael Pollan, author, journalist
Joan was one of my first and most influential teachers when it came to understanding food and agriculture as a system. (The other is Marion Nestle.) Joan saw the politics in all sorts of places people had trouble spotting it, such as the field of nutrition. We first met in the 1990s at the Culinary Institute of America, at a conference about genetically modified crops. She was formidable, and though I don’t recall what she said, it galvanized the room with its penetrating clarity.
She was a master at connecting the dots, and the fact that most of us understand food and agriculture as a single system, linking policy, soil, nutrition, public health, and technology, owes in large part to the work Joan did.
But she was much more than a theorist; indeed, she walked the talk, growing much of her own food on an oft-flooded piece of land right on the Hudson–a beautiful but perilous spot I had the privilege of visiting a couple of times.
The phrase, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” owes at least two words to Joan. When I was researching In Defense of Food, I asked her to sum up what she had learned about how best to eat, and she didn’t miss a beat: “Eat food.” As in, real food, whole foods, unprocessed foods. I embroidered her message a bit, with “mostly plants” and “not too much” but the basic message—which is that we don’t and shouldn’t eat nutrients–was Joan’s. She was an inspiration.
Tom Philpott, senior research associate at the Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins University
Joan Dye Gussow has passed on, but her legacy and influence will live as long as we have ecosystems and natural resources worth defending. Like all of our best and brightest food-system intellectuals, Joan understood that humanity doesn’t exist separately from nature or ecology, but lives deeply embedded within them. We are as much a part of nature as the lion skulking the savanna, or the warbler winging it from the Adirondacks to the Caribbean islands for winter; it’s just that we exert much more influence over the ecosystems we touch.
Joan elegantly summed up this concept in the title of her 1978 book, The Feeding Web: Issues In Nutritional Ecology. “Nutritional ecology”: The idea neatly connects our sustenance with the landscapes that feed us and provide sinks for our waste. Professionally, academically, she was a nutritionist, a field that evolved over decades in tight collaboration with corporate food giants, and too often reduced nutrition to a list of essential vitamins and minerals—commodities that, once injected into highly processed food, the idea went, make a health-giving diet.
Today, this ideology is finally unravelling under the weight of undeniable evidence. Joan rejected it more than a half century ago, and used her perch at Columbia University to launch broadsides against it.
By the time I met her in the late 2000s, Joan was a doyenne of the anti-industrial food movement, renowned for her advocacy in support of local and regional food systems, and for her legendary garden on the banks of the Hudson, not far from New York City. It meant a lot to hear her say she had read and appreciated my journalism work, and it was delightful to be able to tell her how much I had learned from her. She was a happy and inspiring warrior against the forces of industrial agriculture.
And damn it, she was right. Her vision of robust local and regional food networks, bolstered by flourishing small- and mid-scale farms and justly compensated farm labor, represents a beacon for a livable future in an increasingly dystopian age. In a 2011 Civil Eats interview, she allowed that “compared to the reception my ideas got 30 years ago, it’s quite astonishing the reception they’re getting now,” citing the extraordinary artisanal food scenes emerging in places like Brooklyn. But, she added, “whether or not there’s going to be sea change in the whole system is so hard to judge.”
Hard to judge, and harder still to achieve. It’s up to us, the generations she inspired, to make it so. I never managed to take her up on the invitation to visit her Hudson Valley garden. May it flourish in her memory forever. I still hope to see it someday.
Joan Dye Gussow with Urvashi Rangan. Photo courtesy of Rangan.
Urvashi Rangan, founding co-chair, Funders for Regenerative Agriculture (FORA) and chief science advisor, GRACE Communications Foundation
I had the immense pleasure of sharing in Joan’s professional and personal life. As a young scientist, I remember presenting to a nutrition conference and Joan was in the front row and asked many great questions. From then, I always knew to seek her professional opinion on the harms of industrial ag practices and the benefits of organic production. She then invited me to lecture in her classes and always wanted to know the latest goings-on in food politics.
Perhaps what I will remember most about Joan is the laughter, the caring, and the closeness we shared, sometimes verging on tears. I remember one conversation about gut microbiomes and people reseeding with poop from other people. We decided that Joan’s poop would be worth more than gold since her biome had only eaten organic food forever.
“Perhaps what I will remember most about Joan is the laughter, the caring, and the closeness we shared, sometimes verging on tears.”
Despite the 40 years between us, I found Joan to be one of my closest and dear friends and one of the youngest people I have known. I remember leaving a conference in NYC together where she gave the keynote, and while we were driving home, she looked at me and said, “My God, Urvashi, there were some really old people there.” Joan wasn’t talking about age, but mindset (and she was so right).
And while she may have been the oldest person in the room, her mind and heart were youthful, yet wise. I used to tell her that when I grew up, I wanted to be just like her. She was a teacher until the end, in the classroom and out. I will miss her immensely and will cherish all of the times we had together.
Michael Sligh, founding chair, National Organic Standards Board
Joan was that rare breed of academic, activist, and farmer. She helped us bridge movements and she was always on the right side of the fight. Tough as nails and a heart of gold. She will be missed.
Kerry Trueman, sustainability advocate
Joan was a dear friend and mentor to me, as she was to so many people. I became a die-hard devotee of her work after reading her first memoir, This Organic Life. We became friends several decades ago when she gave a talk at The New School. After she spoke, she mingled with the attendees, and I was so excited at the prospect of meeting her that I transcended my shyness to tell her how she had inspired me to plant pawpaws in my yard. Joan, in her inimitable acerbic-yet-affectionate way, liked to say that I had “stalked” her. She once called me her “favorite beneficial pest,” which, coming from her, was a thrilling compliment.
What an honor it was to collaborate with her, to be a guest at so many memorable meals in her lovely home, to work side by side with her to restore her legendary garden after the Hudson River flooded it. The second time the river rose up to swallow her garden, she rose even higher, literally, by raising the soil level to accommodate the consequences of climate change. Her refusal to throw in the trowel in the wake of such destruction was quintessential Joan.
Her perseverance was just one of Joan’s many admirable traits, another being that she was not a purist. For her, eating locally meant being a regular at her local diner, regardless of how they sourced their eggs and bacon. How grateful I am to have known her.
Karen Washington with Joan Gassow. Photo courtesy of Washington.
Karen Washington, farmer, activist, and co-founder of Black Urban Growers
Joan was such a kind and loving person. Her first act of kindness was to invite me and my gardeners from the Bronx to come visit and have lunch. Many of them did not speak English, but were able to enjoy her company, her garden, and the food. She loved people and was willing to share her home with strangers.
We became close as board members of Just Food. Her knowledge and wisdom of the food system was incredible. She taught me to be courageous and not sit by and allow things to happen, but to challenge things that were hard. I loved her so much and will miss her, but I will carry a piece of her in my work to fight against injustice.
Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, founder of Chez Panisse and The Edible Schoolyard
Joan had a HUGE influence on my life and my thinking. “Eat locally, think globally” became my motto for Chez Panisse, and now for school food purchasing everywhere.
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]]>The point of this post is to showcase our new food policy tracker, which covers the latest news on food policy in washington, d.c.
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]]>The post Our Best Food Policy Stories of 2024 appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>When we started Civil Eats in 2009, no other news outlet focused its coverage solely on food policy. Now, nearly 16 years later, we believe we’ve helped make food policy a regular part of the national dialogue by explaining how our food system functions, and how it dictates the winners and losers as our nation’s food is produced, distributed, and consumed.
As we look ahead to 2025, we plan to double down on the complexities of the U.S. food system—its shortcomings and its possibilities—and to report on solutions to the system’s most pressing challenges. Doing so furthers our mission to deepen conversations about food and agriculture, spotlight underrepresented voices, hold the powerful to account, and move us closer to a more equitable, sustainable future.
Those intentions shaped the dozens of food policy stories we brought to you this year, from a look at a local Denver ballot initiative that aimed to close its last commercial slaughterhouse (eliminating 160 jobs) to an examination of Florida immigration law to an analysis of how the 2024 presidential elections could impact the food on our plates.
Here are our best food policy stories of 2024.
Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Should a Plan to Curb Meat Industry Water Pollution Consider the Business Costs?
A calculation of costs has sparked a debate about water pollution from meat and poultry processing plants.
A Florida Immigration Law Is Turning Farm Towns Into ‘Ghost Towns’
Florida is one of a growing number of states threatening to use E-Verify as a way to intimidate and control farmworkers. As farmers face worker shortages and farm communities lose residents, are GOP lawmakers shooting themselves in the foot?
California Farm Counties Are Not Even Close to Meeting the EPA’s New Clean Air Quality Standard
The nation’s largest agriculture region has never been able to meet the EPA’s standard for pollution from particulate matter. Health and environmental justice groups are hoping the new rules will spur urgent action.
Inside Bayer’s State-by-State Efforts to Stop Pesticide Lawsuits
As the agrichemical giant lays groundwork to fend off Roundup litigation, its use of a playbook for building influence in farm-state legislatures has the potential to benefit pesticide companies nationwide.
USDA Photo by Lance Cheung
New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
USDA’s nutrition standards aim to support farmers.
Pesticide Industry Could Win Big in Latest Farm Bill Proposal
A draft farm bill language could weaken protections from pesticide risk.
Senator Cory Booker Says FDA Proposal Could Worsen Antibiotic Resistance
The New Jersey senator sends a letter to the agency, asking it to enforce limits on farm use of antibiotics.
Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country
Project 2025 and the Republican Study Committee budget both propose major changes to how the government supports commodity farmers. They might face strong opposition from ag groups and their farm constituents.
Project 2025 Calls for Major Cuts to the US Nutrition Safety Net
The conservative playbook proposes sweeping changes to the USDA that would impact both SNAP and WIC.
The US Weakens a UN Declaration on Antibiotic Resistance
The government undercuts a proposal to protect public health.
Minh and Nhu-Hai Ngo on their chicken farm in Vienna, Georgia. (Photo courtesy of the Ngos)
For Contract Farmers, the Election Could Change Everything—or Nothing at All
The Biden administration has done more than other administrations to protect farmers from corporate abuses, but some say it’s not nearly enough. Would Harris or Trump do things differently?
Can Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ‘Make America Healthy Again’?
MAHA lands on Capitol Hill.
The Fate of Denver’s Last Slaughterhouse Is on the Ballot
Denver voters are facing a complicated choice between jobs, workers’ rights, and animal welfare.
Op-ed: What a Second Trump Administration Could Mean for Your Food
The likely scenarios: higher prices, less nutritious food, and an increased risk of pathogens in the food supply. And that’s not the half of it.
Will Disaster Relief Come Through for North Carolina’s Small Farms?
For farms hit by flooding, the USDA is the nation’s main safety net—but it’s already failed small farmers in Vermont.
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]]>The post Our Best Community Food Solutions Stories of 2024 appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Over our nearly 16 years of covering the U.S. food system, we’ve seen firsthand how complex, often sobering stories about challenges in food and farming come to life when they include real people trying to fix problems at the local level.
Climate change, environmental health issues, and food access are foremost among those challenges. The people and projects we drew inspiration from this year provided creative, community-appropriate improvements to disaster relief, wildfire prevention, living wages, and food access, among other pressing issues.
Here are our best community food solutions stories of 2024.
The Farmers Leaning On Each Other’s Tools
The cost of specialized farm equipment is one of the biggest barriers for small-scale and beginning farmers. Cooperatives are springing up around the nation to help bridge the gap.
This Group Has Helped Farmworkers Become Farm Owners for More Than 2 Decades
California’s farmworkers face untold barriers accessing the land, capital, and training needed to strike out on their own. For 20 years, ALBA has been slowly changing the landscape for this important group of aspiring growers.
Can Prescriptions for Produce-Focused Meal Kits Fight Diabetes?
Over half of the population of Stockton, California, is diabetic or pre-diabetic. A prescribed meal kit program helps some residents manage the disease and may provide a model for other communities.
A participant in the Healthy Food Rx program gets ready to prepare a recipe with the fresh produce she received in one of its meal kits. (Photo credit: Abbott Fund)
Micro Solar Leases: A New Income Stream for Black Farmers in the South?
EnerWealth Solutions wants to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Black farmers and landowners in the Carolinas.
Native Youth Learn to Heal Their Communities Through Mycelium
Spirit of the Sun is using traditional ecological knowledge to help address food insecurity and connection to culture.
How a Community Gardener Grew Food for Her Family, Quit Her Job at McDonald’s, and Started a Farm
A Q&A with Maximina Hernández Reyes, who credits her success to a Portland, Oregon, food network called Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative.
A Community of Growers
How East New York Farms builds food security and provides jobs for its neighborhood.
Farm Stops Create New Markets for Small Farms
These brick-and-mortar consignment businesses support farmers and bring fresh, locally grown food to their communities.
Kim Bayer, owner of Slow Farm, in Ann Arbor, MI, with farm managers Zach Goodman and Magda Nawrocka-Weekes. Slow Farm sells its organic produce at Argus, a local farm stop. (Photo credit: Paige Hodder)
How a Vermont Cheesemaker Helps Local Farms Thrive
By paying top dollar for milk and sourcing within 15 miles of its creamery, Jasper Hill supports an entire community.
Good Goats Make Good Neighbors
A California nonprofit builds community through goat grazing to reduce wildfire risk, farm-to-school programs, and more.
After Hurricane Helene, Local Farmers and Chefs Pivot to Disaster Relief
Western North Carolina farms, restaurants, and even a festival quickly switched gears to get fresh food and water to neighbors devastated by the worst storm in more than a century.
Restoring a Cornerstone of the Local Grain Economy
A new community of millers joins the revival of America’s regional grain heritage, connecting farmers with a market eager for fresh, local flour.
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]]>Civil Eats has focused on food justice since our inception in 2009. Rare for the media landscape, we regularly report on the food system’s disproportionate impact on people of color and immigrant communities, and we are one the few outlets dedicated to covering the unique food-related issues facing Indigenous communities. We also strive to cultivate perspectives from people of color, as reporters, op-ed contributors, and sources in our reporting.
In 2024, for example, we wrote about the often-overlooked food angle in the Land Back Movement, which aims to return land to tribal communities. We also brought you stories about farmworkers pushing for wage, heat, and labor protections, and showcased the efforts of people like Gail Taylor and Jim Embry, who have spent years working to change the food system and provide greater access for all.
Here are our best food justice stories of 2024.
The Land Back Movement Is Also About Foodways
When Native peoples’ land was stolen, they lost important hunting and fishing grounds and myriad places to gather and prepare food. Now, the Land Back movement is helping communities regain access to both food and land.
From Civil Rights to Food Justice, Jim Embry Reflects on a Life of Creative Resistance
The veteran food-systems organizer says, “within agriculture [is] where we have the most profound need for change, and the most powerful fulcrum point for social transformation of all other human institutions.”
Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.
The Fair Food Program offers the strongest, legally binding protocols to keep people safe when politicians fall short.
Yupik subsistence whalers from the Alaska town of Gambell, parting the ice as they tow a bowhead whale to shore. (Photo credit: Jim Wickens)
For This Alaska Town, Whaling Is a Way of Life
The PBS documentary ‘One with the Whale’ explores the importance of subsistence hunting and gathering in a Yupik village—and what happens when mainlanders misunderstand it.
The Shrimp on Your Plate Has a Dark History
Shining a light on India’s exploited shrimp workers, the spread of avian flu, and the big banks undermining climate goals.
Strawberry Farmworkers Fight for a Living Wage
Picking strawberries is one of the lowest-paid, most brutal jobs in agriculture. A new report argues for a better path forward that benefits everyone, including the growers.
Ira Wallace (left) and Sariyah Benoit sit together in Spelman College’s Victory Garden.
(Photo credit: Heirloom Gardens Project)
Oral History Project Preserves Black and Indigenous Food Traditions
The Heirloom Gardens Project records the stories of elders and honors both long-held expertise and culturally meaningful foods.
A US Court Found Chiquita Guilty of Murder in Colombia. What Does the Ruling Mean for Other U.S. Food Corporations Abroad?
The case marks the first time a U.S. court held a corporation liable for human rights abuses committed in another country.
In Brazil, a Powerful Law Protects Biodiversity and Blocks Corporate Piracy
The country’s genetic heritage law aims to compensate Indigenous peoples for their knowledge of the plants and seeds that many US food and agribusiness companies use to develop profitable products.
Farmworkers Push Kroger’s Shareholders for Heat and Labor Protections
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida worker rights organization, has repeatedly asked Kroger to join its Fair Food Program, which has the strongest heat protections in the nation.
On Cape Cod, the Wampanoag Assert Their Legal Right to Harvest the Waters
Not everyone respects that right. But the Wampanoag are determined to continue, saying their work is an essential expression of 12,000 years of heritage, sovereignty, and lifeways.
Labor Protections for Immigrant Food Workers Are at Stake in the 2024 Election
A Biden administration policy shields immigrants who report on workplace abuses. It could face an uncertain future—and so could visa policies.
Op-ed: Food Security Is Urgently Needed in Black Rural Appalachia
A food justice advocate who grew up near this mountainous region explains how Black communities here struggle to access healthy food, and lays out ways to build local food systems that reach everyone.
Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC, an immigrant advocacy organization, during a heat awareness education outreach in 2023. Hemet, CA. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Farmworker Challenges, Solidarity Emphasized as Threat of Mass Deportations Looms
Results of a historic farmworker tribunal, an anti-monopoly roadmap for Trump 2.0, and more.
A Black-Led Agricultural Community Takes Shape in Maryland
An urban farm trailblazer begins building a Black agrarian corridor in rural Maryland, fostering community and climate resilience. Land access was the first step.
Black Earth: A Family’s Journey from Enslavement to Reclamation
In North Carolina, a Black farmer purchased the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved—and is taking back his family’s story, his community’s health, and the soil beneath his feet.
The Mashpee Wampanoag Work With a Cape Cod Town to Restore Their Fishing Grounds
If the plan succeeds, it will help rebuild wetlands and food sources for the tribe, once largely excluded from environmental decision-making.
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]]>The post Our Best Climate Reporting of 2024 appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding brought on by climate change all have a massive impact on the food system. Farmers are having to adjust what they grow and how they grow it, and people all along the food chain—from the workers who harvest the crops to the consumers who eat them—feel the effects. At the same time, agriculture is a major contributor to the climate crisis, producing one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Civil Eats has long been committed to covering the intersection of the food system and climate change. In addition to looking at the greenhouse gas impacts of growing, harvesting, transporting, processing, packaging, and distributing food, we also examine the ways food-system players are addressing climate change with strategies that sequester carbon, cut emissions, save water, and establish new markets.
This year, for example, we looked at the meat industry’s influence on climate research and the presidential candidates’ stances on climate change. We also reported on farmers experimenting with the wild seed relatives of domestic crops, which may be better able to withstand extreme weather, and the underground fungal networks that trap carbon and support healthy plant life.
Additionally, we published a four-part series examining the challenges and potential of kelp as a regenerative crop, a four-part series on the power and impact of the pesticide industry, and a five-part series looking at how the climate crisis is affecting restaurants, asking ourselves: What is a climate-conscious restaurant, if that even exists?
Here are our best climate stories of 2024.
As Saltwater Encroaches on Farms, Solutions Emerge From the Marshes
In the Mid-Atlantic, sea level rise due to climate change is already altering what farmers can grow.
The USDA Updated Its Gardening Map, But Downplays Connection to Climate Change
The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map has been updated after more than a decade. It confirms what anyone who’s planted seeds recently already knows.
Micro Solar Leases: A New Income Stream for Black Farmers in the South? EnerWealth Solutions wants to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Black farmers and landowners in the Carolinas.
Photo credit: dhughes9/Getty Images
New Research Shows How the Meat Industry Infiltrated Universities to Obstruct Climate Policy
We look at how Big Meat seeks to influence climate understanding, climate-friendly farming practices, and more.
Fungi Are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil Carbon
By tapping into underground fungal networks, farmers are learning how to build lush, spongy soil that supports healthy plants and stores carbon underground.
Seeds From Wild Crop Relatives Could Help Agriculture Weather Climate Change
The hardy wild cousins of domesticated crops can teach us how to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future.
Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee
In the face of severe climate change, farmers, researchers, and coffee devotees are refocusing on agroforestry and developing hardier varieties and high-tech beanless brews to save our morning cup of Joe.
Kelp’s Tangled Lines: Charting the Future of Seaweed in the Face of Climate Change
This in-depth four-part series, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, looks at kelp as a valuable regenerative crop for both U.S. coasts, tracing the rise of the industry and the challenges it faces in fulfilling its potential.
(Illustration by Civil Eats)
Chemical Capture: The Power and Impact of the Pesticide Industry
In this investigative series, we examine whether consolidated corporate power may be contributing to the ubiquitous use of pesticides and other chemicals, and whether the influence that chemical companies wield in the halls of power make it difficult to sort facts from marketing or engage in rigorous cost-benefit analyses.
The Pawpaw, a Beloved Native Fruit, Could Seed a More Sustainable Future for Small Farms
As festivals celebrate the pawpaw for its tropical flavor and custardy texture, researchers explore its potential as a low-input, high-value crop that’s easy to grow organically.
Why Are US Agricultural Emissions Dropping?
The EPA’s annual emissions report points to declines in cattle numbers and fertilizer use, data that could inform major climate events this fall.
Climate on the Menu
In this five-part series, produced in partnership with Eater, we examine how climate change is driving a shift in farm relationships, supply chains, labor, waste disposal, and service, aiming to better understand the ongoing climate realities that restaurants face—and we ask ourselves: What is a climate-conscious restaurant, if it even exists?
Climate on the menu. (Illustration by Ellie Krupnik)
Where Do the Presidential Candidates Stand on Climate Change?
We examined their track records and party platforms to explore the approaches each might take if elected, and how those might impact food and agriculture.
Colorado’s Groundwater Experiment
Farmers in the San Luis Valley mount an all-hands effort to restore the shrinking aquifers that make agriculture possible here. Their tactic: groundwater conservation easements.
Utah Tries a New Water Strategy
Amid drought and demand, this state is trying to circumvent one of the oldest water rules of the West: ‘Use It or Lose It.’
Farm Runoff May Be Tied to Respiratory Illness Near the Salton Sea
New research on California’s largest landlocked lake suggests agricultural runoff in the water is feeding ‘extreme microbes’ that can emit harmful compounds into the air.
Southern Black Farmers Sow Rice and Reconciliation
Jubilee Justice grows rice regeneratively while reclaiming the past.
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]]>The post Our 2024 Food and Farming Holiday Book Gift Guide appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>We hope our Holiday Book Guide can help create a calm harbor of sorts during this often-harried end-of-year season. Our editors, staff writers, and freelance contributors have a wide selection of food and agriculture books to recommend, both for gift-giving purposes and for the quiet moments you carve out for yourself.
Our choices include an examination of climate-friendly eating, an argument for gift economies, a guide to keeping bees, and a history of how chicken nuggets have shaped our food system—plus a variety of other memoirs, social histories, and journalistic endeavors. We also offer a number of outstanding cookbooks for fueling good eating, conversation, and connection around your table during this holiday season.
We hope this guide can help anchor your reading time over the coming weeks and months—and that our favorite titles become yours as well. If you want to suggest a book we missed, please let us know in the comments.
Against the Grain: How Farmers Around the Globe Are Transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet
By Roger Thurow
Award-winning journalist Roger Thurow brings forth stories of Indigenous farmers in the Great Plains of the United States, the Highlands of Central America, Africa’s Rift Valley, and India’s Indo-Gangetic Plain who are employing a range of sustainable agricultural practices. Prioritizing ecological integrity and community health over yield, these farmers stay profitable by diversifying their crops, producing value-added products like jams and sauces, and building community support and social capital. Through captivating case studies, Thurow’s hopeful book showcases farmers who have boldly gone against the grain of modern agriculture orthodoxy and are instead embracing regenerative practices—like agroecology and permaculture—that restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, and promote resilience against climate change.
In the book, we meet Brandon Kaufman, a Kansas farmer who, after generations of family farming, plans “to get a divorce from wheat” to focus on perennials as a way to nurture the soil and the vital underground network of insects and microorganisms within it. We also meet the affable Kansas dairyman Jason Schmidt, who orchestrated the grazing patterns of his cows to maintain healthy carbon-capturing grasslands and offset methane emissions. Against the Grain serves as a powerful call to action, encouraging consumers, agriculturalists, and policymakers alike to preserve the land that sustains them, and the world, and ensure the viability of farms for generations to come. —Mira Ptacin
Beekeeping for Gardeners
By Richard Rickett
In the first line of Beekeeping for Gardeners, Rick Rickitt professes that the honey bee is a close second to a dog as man’s best friend. Clearly, bees are more than just a hobby for him. Rickitt’s enthusiasm is contagious—and quickly turned me from bee appreciator to bee booster. I also learned that managing an apiary is not for the faint of heart; it’s a perennial commitment.
Beekeeping for Gardeners goes beyond a typical guide, serving as a veritable compendium of bee knowledge. Yes, you will learn how to build a hive and identify whether your bees are about to swarm and send off members of the colony to establish a new one. But you will also learn that bees have existed since the Cretaceous period, their small bodies evolved perfectly to collect pollen, and they communicate through dance. Even if you decide managing an apiary isn’t for you, you’ll find there’s more than one way to “keep” bees. Gardeners can plant alliums or forget-me-nots in the spring, for example, to attract honey bees and solitary bees, rather than tend a hive that might swarm. Filled with vivid and beautiful images along with charts and lists that serve as easy reference guides, this book can make a beekeeper out of anyone. —Elizabeth Doerr
Big Vegan Flavor: Techniques and 150 Recipes to Master Vegan Cooking
By Nisha Vora
Nisha Vora resigned herself to eating bland foods when she first went vegan, which she did for ethical reasons. A lawyer turned vegan recipe developer and founder of the lifestyle website Rainbow Plant Life, Vora often found herself hungry—until she became a better cook and started exploring what she calls “big vegan flavor.” Eventually, the concept became a rallying cry—and the name of her new book.
By properly layering flavors at every stage of the cooking process to give vegetables the respect she believes they deserve, Vora aims to show that it’s possible to create satisfying meals without relying on crutches like cheese and butter. She goes deep into how to use an arsenal of herbs, aromatics, spices, and chiles to punch up a dish, along with chapters on grains, everyday veggies, and easy-to-swap proteins. She also includes a section of “wow-worthy meals” that she says are “hearty enough for omnivores,” stacked with recipes like velvety white-bean and tomato stew and crispy smashed potatoes, plus sauces like avocado crema and a throwback ranch dressing.
Vora shares everything she has learned during her vegan journey and aspires to help readers become more intuitive cooks by providing the “how” and “why” behind her recipes. Her lessons on using acid or sugar to balance out flavors, for example, and how to achieve a creamy texture without dairy, can be applied well beyond the book’s 150 recipes. Vora hopes these tricks, tips, and recipes show readers that you don’t have to deprive yourself to eat “more plants and fewer animals.” —Tilde Herrera
The Blue Plate: A Food 
Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos
By Mark J. Easter
An ecologist who studies the carbon footprint of food, Mark Easter found himself making grim climate calculations every time he ate dinner. Then, after visiting a thriving urban farm with a minimal carbon footprint, he began to wonder whether we could shift our climate trajectory by eating and farming differently.
In The Blue Plate, Easter answers that question with urgency and enthusiasm, taking us on a tour of a half-dozen of our most staple foods and connecting each to its particular legacy of extractive agriculture: wheat and the depleted soils of the Midwest, desert vegetables that depend on river-ruining dams, shrimp raised in waters where carbon-rich mangrove forests once stood. Some of these stories are familiar now, but Easter finds the details that make them come alive and unpacks the science with the panache of a storyteller. Throughout, carbon-footprint bar charts show the multiple emission sources for each food, conveying the impact of an entire supply chain at a glance.
The book goes beyond the problems, too. Every chapter dives into alternate ways of raising those same foods. Easter visits farmers and ranchers who follow restorative techniques tuned to the specific needs of their land, and reports on regenerative breakthroughs like perennial farming as well as ancient Indigenous practices like agroforestry. In a final chapter, he brings it all together in a list of suggestions for low-carbon eating—a “blue plate” that could help preserve our future on this blue planet. —Margo True
Chile, Clove, and Cardamom
By Beth Dooley and Gary Paul Nabhan
As much of the planet moves toward a hotter, drier future, here’s a book that accepts the inevitable, but not with dread or gloom. Instead, the authors of Chile, Clove, and Cardamom argue that even in a ferocious climate, we can find a way to eat well by embracing ingredients and cuisines from the desert regions of the globe, from the Middle East to the southwestern United States.
Plants and herbs from arid regions tend to smell and taste more pungent, we learn—partly because the heat and lack of moisture concentrates their flavor, but also because of the protective antioxidants these species produce to help them withstand blistering sun and drought. Potent aromas and flavors practically rise from the pages as you thumb through the recipes: sage, thyme, oregano, chile, roasted eggplant, tahini, pomegranates, wild greens, nutty tepary beans, and toasted mesquite flour, the essences of ancient desert cuisines. Culinary history, science, and ingredient notes enrich the reading, but the real joy of this book rests in the cooking. The recipes are friendly, concise, and doable, with suggested alternatives for less-available ingredients. They may even offer, as the authors suggest, “sufficient sensuous pleasures to assure us that our lives need not be impoverished as the planet’s climates change.” —Margo True
The Crop Cycle: Stories with Deep Roots
By Shane Mitchell
Writer Shane Mitchell was born and raised in New York, but her Southern roots run 11 generations deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The Crop Cycle is a collection of reported essays Mitchell has penned over the last nine years (including a never-before-published piece about dessert) that explore consequential Southern crops—corn, peanuts, tomatoes, okra, peaches, onions, and watermelon, to name a few.
In the essays, many of which have earned James Beard Foundation nominations or awards, Mitchell follows the crops back to their origins in places like the African continent, and then traces their often-fraught journeys to the American South. She also visits people who grow, prepare, and celebrate those foods today—like the owner of an East Charleston Gullah restaurant known for its crab rice, organizers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) fighting for the rights of tomato pickers, and the 19-year-old winner of the Miss Georgia Peach pageant.
Throughout, Mitchell weaves in her own connection to the foods—we hear about her nana’s rice-cooking regimen, her father’s habit of storing Vidalia onion bulbs in used pantyhose, and her great-aunt’s penchant for gifting kumquats for Christmas. The colorful essays, which span centuries and continents but also feel present-tense and intensely Southern, explore the crops’ personal and cultural significance as well as complicated issues of race, class, labor, and land. —Christina Cooke
Elysian Kitchens: Recipes Inspired by the Traditions and Tastes of the World’s Sacred Spaces
By Jody Eddy
What would it mean to treat food as a miracle, as a gift of the universe received in wonder and gratitude? Jody Eddy spent a globetrotting year engaging with that question through the lens of religious communities. The result is Elysian Kitchens, a combination cookbook, travelogue, and testament to the common culinary wisdom of the planet’s faiths.
Regardless of their theology, the holy men and women Eddy interviews believe in sourcing locally, eating with the seasons, avoiding waste, and sharing abundance with their communities. Those shared values blossom in a vibrant diversity of expressions, from the wild rice casserole prepared by the monks of Saint John’s Abbey in Minnesota to the hamutzim (pickled vegetables) served at a Jewish soup kitchen in New York—all of them captured with meditative joy by photographer Kristin Teig.
Eddy acknowledges that organized religion has too often become a source of conflict in the world. Yet her quietly beautiful book shines with the hope that, by reminding people of their common need for daily bread, Earth’s spiritual traditions can forge a deeper human solidarity. —Daniel Walton
The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef: In Pursuit of the Ideal Meal
By Daniel J. Philippon
For his new book, University of Minnesota English professor Daniel Philippon gave himself the assignment to study the writings of Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, Italian gastronome Carlo Petrini, and California chef Alice Waters to understand how each contributed to the sustainable food movement over the last half century. The resulting treatise yields insights into farming (“the teeming wilderness that is the soil,” according to Berry), food distribution (“the umbilical cord” that Petrini says connects producers and consumers), and the tension between methods and ingredients in good cooking (Waters declares it’s vital to have “the freshest ingredients you could find, and then doing as little as possible to them”).
Philippon doesn’t sit still while he’s reading. To gather present-day viewpoints on the three thinkers, he spends time at places relevant to each. We join him as he transplants flats of vegetables on a Wisconsin Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, meets a small-scale rice producer in Italy’s Piedmont, and prepares a market-to-table meal in Lyon, France. (Fulbright scholarships and visiting professorships have their benefits.) Philippon concludes that “the ideal meal” is not so much about the end product but the practices that yielded its creation: “practice makes the world,” he says. To that point, my heavily underlined copy of The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef is likely to become dog-eared as well. —Lynn Fantom
From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture
By Stephanie Anderson
The “bigger and cheaper” mentality of industrial agriculture incurs great environmental and social costs. But the growing number of women working to promote regenerative agriculture—loosely defined as growing practices that benefit soil health, water supply, and the larger climate ecosystem—offers hope for the future, author Stephanie Anderson argues in From the Ground Up. Women tend to prioritize collaboration, mentorship, and sustainability, Anderson notes, and those qualities are sorely needed as the agricultural sector faces challenges such as declining soil quality and the effects of climate change.
From the Ground Up spotlights a wide range of women who are prioritizing a sustainability mindset when it comes to feeding their community and the wider world. Anderson weaves together engaging interviews with a range of women farmers, business leaders, and scientists with on-the-ground reporting and reflection on her own family’s involvement in industrial agriculture. Furthermore, she examines the roots of regenerative agriculture and the many contributions made by members of marginalized groups. In the end, From the Ground Up paints a hopeful picture of how agricultural practices could evolve for the better. —Katherine Kornei
Industrial Farm Animal Production, the Environment, and Public Health
Edited by James Merchant and Robert Martin
While this tome is as academic as its title suggests, it is an extremely thorough and well-documented work on the industrialization of meat and egg production. A collection of essays by academic, government, and NGO experts, it provides a timely look at the impact of our industrial food system on generational poverty, diminished civic life, reduced self-determination, and a growing lack of trust in government in rural communities. In excruciating detail, the book surveys the horrifying consequences of industrial farm animal operations: human and animal disease and mortality, antibiotic resistance, the suffering of animals and meat-packing workers, the near-serfdom of farmers to multinational corporations, vile air and water pollution, and the unredressed destruction of neighbors’ quality of life. It also reveals how we got here and why governments (federal and state) won’t do anything about this broken system. Finally, as a ray of hope, it offers some proven solutions for alleviating the worst of the system’s problems and—as a moonshot—steps to dismantle the system itself. —Anne N. Connor
Conflict of Interest Statement: Connor was recently hired as a part-time science writer at Johns Hopkins University, whose press published this title, but has had no involvement with the book’s editors or authors.
In Search of the Perfect Peach: Why Flavour Holds the Answer to Fixing our Food System
By Franco Fubini
Produce distributor Franco Fubini’s new book, In Search of the Perfect Peach, makes the case for a “flavor-first food system.” As founder and CEO of Natoora, a specialty produce company with outposts in Europe, Australia, and North America, Fubini with this book joins a larger conversation exploring fixes for a deeply broken system. He points to research on the “dilution effect” caused by growing for yield and shelf-stability in industrial agriculture. This causes nutrient-depleted soils and a loss of both flavor ans nutritional value, he claims, making a case that better-tasting produce is also more nutritious.
The titular, world-changing peach appears in the form of the Greta, an intensely flavorful, aromatic white peach from Campania, Italy, that inspired in him a deeper appreciation for rich flavor and hyper-seasonality. From there, Fubini takes readers on a tour—from tomato growers in Italy to flower farmers in Cornwall to citrus groves in California—while arguing that it’s possible to build a supply chain tailored around fresh, flavorful, high-quality produce. While the book would have benefitted from interrogating the role of class in how people approach conversations about fresh food, Fubini makes a compelling case for strengthening the connections between consumers and farmers. —s.e. smith
Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold Story of the Disappearing American Farmer
By Brian Reisinger
As the world population grows toward 10 billion over the next quarter century, straining the global food system, growers face rising challenges, from labor shortages to climate change to a steady decline in farmable soil. While these problems increasingly make news headlines, the stories less often told are those of the farmers themselves. Writer and rural policy expert Brian Reisinger’s memoir is thus a rare find. The raw and unfiltered narrative spans four generations of his farming family, set against the backdrop of agricultural history that runs from the Great Depression through COVID. Highlighting the barriers that small farms face amid a growing world population and demand for food, Reisinger poses the question, “Will we make it?” And rightly so: Since 1982, the number of farms has declined by 7 percent between 2017 and 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The Reisinger family’s journey into farming began in 1912, soon after his great-grandfather and grandmother emigrated from Bavaria, Germany, to Wisconsin. The young couple started a 180-acre dairy farm for livelihood to raise their 14 children. Each new generation inherited the farm and faced many hardships, from icy winters to the Farm Crisis of the 1980s and rapid changes in technology. Gripping stories point to how dangerous the profession can be—the author’s grandfather Albert fell 30 feet in a corn silo, breaking his back, and his parents Jim and Jean braved ice storms, illness, and the forced sale of their cows, followed by the struggle to return to dairy farming. Does the author ultimately take on the family farm? The read is well worth finding out. Moreover, we gain a much greater appreciation of American farmers and all they brave to produce the food we eat. —Amy Wu
Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation
By Eleanor Barnett
Spoiler alert: Food waste squanders resources, contributes to climate change, and plagues wealthy nations—especially (and counterintuitively) since the advent of refrigeration. Though it’s a familiar topic for many by now, Eleanor Barnett’s detailed storytelling makes food waste fascinating in Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation. From medieval England to Brexit and the pandemic, Barnett expertly rolls out the dough of U.K. history to prove that “if ‘you are what you eat,’ our values and culture are equally defined by what we don’t eat.”
The book traces changing attitudes towards food waste through several centuries, and though the focus is on Great Britain, Barnett shows how the British culture of excess spread with the empire and persists in many ways to this day. Wasting food in 1500s England was, of course, a luxury. But the widespread practice of redistributing leftovers helped those in need and limited waste. Colonialism brought new, mind-boggling bounty, and with the Victorian onset of the “throwaway society,” leftovers were out and convenience was in. During the world wars, the U.K. government rallied citizens to again save those leftovers: Land Girls saved crops from rotting on farms; Pig Clubs fed kitchen scraps to swine to produce extra meat rations. But after World War II, Europeans wanted a “seat at the feast the Americans were hosting.” The Brits abolished public funding for food preservation in 1954. Then came refrigeration, plastics, the Green Revolution, and agricultural advances that changed how the world gets—and throws out—its food.
“‘The world produces enough food to feed everyone, if distributed equally,’” Barnett writes, quoting the founders of Food Not Bombs. Pandemic-era distribution efforts showed us what’s possible in terms of food rescue, and AI is already in the kitchen tracking scraps. Pick up Leftovers for motivation on reducing the muckpile. —Leorah Gavidor
Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company
By Alice Driver
Investigative journalist Alice Driver cements her reputation as one of the foremost chroniclers of the perilous lives of food chain workers in her debut book Life and Death of the American Worker, a story of the unrealized promise of the American dream. This sweeping investigation closely follows a handful of immigrant and refugee workers subjected to merciless, regulations-skirting conditions while processing more than a hundred birds per minute at Tyson’s meatpacking plants in rural Arkansas, where Driver grew up.
Expanding on Driver’s award-winning Civil Eats investigation, the book reveals how Tyson’s meatpacking industry is structured to conceal injuries. Workers are directed to on-site nurses and company-approved doctors, all part of a vertically integrated healthcare system that downplays and ignores injuries—and even punishes workers for seeking medical help. There is an eviscerating quality to Driver’s prose as she renders in exacting detail the workers’ repetitive motions and neglected injuries.
But this is not just the story of a corporation’s harrowing disregard for life; it is also about what Driver describes as the “moral beauty of the immigrants who process our nation’s meat,” like the women workers who joined together to teach each other how to stand up for their rights. Driver takes us inside the homes of workers, witnessing their daily rituals of survival and grief. In one especially haunting scene, a former Tyson worker leaves a “cup covered in red hearts full of fresh coffee for Plácido”—an offering to her husband who died of Covid-19 early in the pandemic. He was likely predisposed to the virus because his lungs had been engulfed in ammonia after a chloride spill at Tyson. Life and Death of the American Worker is essential reading for anyone who cares about the U.S. food system and the immigrant workers who sacrifice their health to make it possible. —Grey Moran
Love, Nature, Magic: Shamanic Journeys into the Heart of My Garden
By Maria Rodale
Grass, mosquitos, vultures, and paper wasps are some of the 26 more-than-human kin with whom Maria Rodale converses in her Pennsylvania garden in Love, Nature, Magic. Head of the Rodale Institute and Rodale, Inc. publishing group, which specializes in works about nature, Rodale provides a 101-level glimpse of the shamanic journeying process, which traditionally involves interacting with the spirit world and other realms of consciousness to unlock power or information for healing or reunification. Unlike some practitioners, her version of journeying does not involve ingesting anything; rather, Rodale facilitates these experiences using sound—specifically a drum or rattle—as her shamanic guide. (Still other practitioners may use ecstatic dance as a method of transport.)
This tome, a peek into animism and pantheism, relates a series of essay-like journal entries from April 2021 to May 2022 that detail Rodale’s visits with the insects, plants, fauna, and fungi in her garden. Her journals expound upon the dialogues she carries out with her more-than-human kin, and the lessons she absorbs from observing the ways they conduct their lives. Love, Nature, Magic is suited to readers who yearn for nature amid urban life, seeking to connect with the wildness that is already within them. Ultimately, this book answers the question: How can we co-exist more peaceably with nature by understanding the ways of nature? —Sarahlynn Pablo
The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between
By Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho
Tu David Phu’s new cookbook is an homage to immigrant families—and mothers, in particular. The Top Chef alum, raised in Oakland, California, focuses on stories and recipes from Phú Quoc, an island in the Southwest of Vietnam where his parents are from.
The son of refugees, Phu grew up with his father, a fishmonger, and his mother, a seamstress. Several essays throughout the cookbook serve as a guide to his upbringing and ethos. For example, an essay on seafood sustainability covers not only where fish are caught, but also how using all parts of a fish is the way his family sustained themselves, like the many generations before them. The book was written with Soleil Ho, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist and the paper’s former food critic, and edited by Bryant Terry (Black Food, Vegan Soul Kitchen).
In these pages, you will find recipes for Vietnamese hotpot soup made with salmon, a brined herring salad, and classics like pho ga, a chicken noodle soup. Tu shares Vietnamese staples, including a pickle of julienned daikon and carrots that pairs well with many dishes, and a simple lime and fresh-cracked pepper dipping sauce for seafood such as steamed crab that opens up the palate. Filled with colorful photos, the book will be a welcome addition for food lovers who want to expand their repertoire of Vietnamese dishes, from traditional recipes to “authentically inauthentic” chef creations. —Momo Chang
The Mighty Red
By Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Mighty Red, takes place in a fictional town in North Dakota’s Red River Valley, a region famous for growing sugar beets. Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, previously wrote about the rise of that crop as a commodity and the bittersweet ways it changed life in the valley, in her 1986 novel The Beet Queen.
The Mighty Red takes place between 2008 and 2024, with a different cast of characters and in a new era of commodity agriculture. Where beet-growing once brought population growth and chain stores, now trucking, chemicals, and climate change surround the industry. The novel centers on a mixed-race character named Kismet, following both her love triangle with Gary, the son of an established farming family, and Hugo, a dropout autodidact, and the financial and relationship troubles of her beet-truck driver mother and theater-teacher father. Yet the valley and its ecosystem, especially its birds, drive the motion of the novel as much as its characters. Erdrich’s well-hewn skill for writing multigenerational dramas about the Native, European-descended, and mixed-race people of the upper Midwest, mixed with detailed and poignant ecological themes, makes for a layered, urgent, human story. —Caroline Tracey
My Regenerative Kitchen: Plant-Based Recipes and Sustainable Practices to Nourish Ourselves and the Planet
By Camilla Marcus
At a time when achieving systemic change in the food system can feel next to impossible, Camilla Marcus invites readers to focus on the good they can do within their own homes. In My Regenerative Kitchen, the chef and restaurateur draws on her experience as the founder of west~bourne, New York City’s first certified zero-waste eatery, to present a bevy of dishes that support sustainable farming through delicious cooking. Now living in California, Marcus curates an eclectic menu that integrates her home state’s produce (think avocado oil and Espelette chili peppers) with world influences, particularly Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Italian cuisines.
For her, “regenerative” reflects agriculture that improves soil health, protects water and biodiversity, and minimizes both waste and chemical inputs. In keeping with that philosophy, her recipes are all plant-based, often feature cover crops like sorghum and buckwheat, and are designed to maximize the use of every ingredient. I especially appreciated the zero-waste “pro tips” sprinkled throughout the text, such as saving the boiled kombu seaweed from Japanese dashi broth to transform into furikake seasoning. Marcus’ earnest writing style, combined with Ben Rosser’s airy film photography, lend the book a certain West Coast utopian vibe, and it’s clear she believes in the potential of individuals to shift food culture. “Together we can regenerate for the next generation,” she urges. “So, in our home kitchens, let’s be radicals, naturally.” —Daniel Walton
Nuggets of Gold: Further Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet
By Patrick Dixon
Few foods are more quintessentially American than the chicken nugget. In his debut book, Nuggets of Gold, historian Patrick Dixon offers a primer on the history of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), the poultry industry, and the chicken nugget.
In 1923, a Delaware farmer accidentally received 10 times as many chickens as she ordered. Instead of returning the chickens, the farmer decided to expand her operation, figuring she might be able to return a decent profit. And she could. By 1926, she had 10,000 birds. Swiftly, an era of CAFOs began in poultry production, which still reigns today. In the post-World War II era, concerns about global food shortages and population booms made “ending hunger” a key focus of U.S. agricultural and foreign policy. The chicken nugget was born during this time—a solution to using parts of a chicken typically wasted in processing and an ideal consumerist option in a growing convenience-oriented economy. Made of “further processed chicken,” nugget production involves the “reclamation of meat that took place once the most popular cuts—breasts, wings, and legs—had been removed from the carcass,” Dixon explains. Increased nugget demand, driven by McDonald’s and other fast-food chains, meant increased demand for cheap chickens. Through the rise of chicken production and consumption, Dixon masterfully illustrates 20th and 21st century U.S. food history—and the evolution of extractive capitalism.
In Nuggets of Gold, which provides a multi-layered narrative through the analysis of historical documents, Dixon argues that the workers on farms, within processing plants, and on the meatpacking floor should be at the core of the poultry industry story. In the epilogue, he writes: “As a thousand poultry lines spun on into the future, nearly two hundred birds per minute hurtling along on a fast track from a cage to a cardboard box in a truck, the human damage that was the untold price of these journeys remained unaccounted for.” —Nina Elkadi
Our South: Black Food Through My Lens
By Ashleigh Shanti
The past few years have seen a handful of cookbook authors try to change perceptions of Black cuisine, rejecting old stereotypes that reduce the flavors of an entire diaspora to a few Southern dishes. Top Chef alum Ashleigh Shanti is the latest to add her voice to this conversation with her debut cookbook, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens.
A Black, queer, Southern chef raised in Virginia and now based in Asheville, North Carolina, Shanti takes readers on a journey through five southern microregions—Backcountry, Lowcountry, Midlands, Lowlands, and Homeland—showcasing their distinct food traditions. Each section honors a woman in her family whose unique cooking style shaped Shanti’s palate and culinary career. Classic recipes like stewed tomatoes, cornbread, Leather Britches (dried green beans), and potlikker meet more personal takes like Spicy Beet Chow Chow, Vinegar-Cured Trout and Sour Apples, and savory Cabbage and Mushroom Pancakes.
With 125 recipes and stunning photography by Johnny Autry, Our South is both a traditional cookbook and coffee table book, making it a perfect centerpiece for any kitchen or living space. Whether you’re a seasoned cook or a culinary novice, Shanti’s book offers something for everyone, combining small bites and big meals with heartfelt anecdotes that all celebrate the rich cultural tapestry of the South. —Nicole J. Caruth
The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why We Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know—and Start Again
By Mariana Chilton
Mariana Chilton’s new book is a necessary read for anyone who wants to understand the issue of hunger in the United States. Chilton, a professor of health management and policy at Pennsylvania’s Drexel University with a master’s degree in epidemiology, has founded numerous anti-hunger programs like the Center for Hunger-Free Communities and Witnesses to Hunger, and has advised Congress on how to end hunger in America. With The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, she helps us wrap our heads around how, even in 2024, getting a nutritious and affordable meal in the United States can be so damn hard.
The book is not for the faint of heart, both for its painful subject matter and its academic tone (complete with four appendices). But to really tackle the complicated issue of food insecurity in the U.S., we cannot overlook Chilton’s wealth of understanding. The text journeys from personal stories—her own, and those of numerous Black and brown women—to the political and the spiritual. Chilton leaves no stone unturned in surveying how systemic biases and institutional greed have exacerbated the solvable problem of hunger in America. She links abuse and gender-based violence to hunger, a connection rarely made in conversations regarding malnutrition.
Furthermore, Chilton wants readers to understand the systemic nature of those biased inequities, which riddle all facets of a person’s life. In this, she challenges those who point to welfare dependency and the abundance of food as evidence the issue of hunger is no longer pressing. Chilton’s new work on a stunningly persistent American problem is paramount. —Paolo Bicchieri
Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch
By Andrea Freeman
Ruin Their Crops on the Ground is a haunting read. Taking its title from George Washington’s 1779 command to destroy Indigenous harvests and “prevent their planting more,” this book details the use of food as a political weapon in America. Freeman, a law professor who coined the term “food oppression,” traces our country’s significant racial health disparities to U.S. food law and policy. Using research and centering the stories of individuals, she creates a narrative that shows the multiple roles food has played and continues to play in subjugating Indigenous, enslaved, and Latinx (Freeman prefers the term “Latine”) people.
Freeman offers thorough histories of the privations of Indian boarding schools and commodity diets, plantation feeding methods, and the home economics efforts used to “Americanize” immigrants. She writes about milk as a marker of whiteness and white superiority, compiling data that shows the narrow band of lactose tolerance that makes the popular and sometimes-force-fed drink harmful to many people. And she highlights a campaign started by Toronto high schoolers to boycott fast food, with images of a McDonald’s French fry box filled with bullets; the USDA, she writes, would not fund such food truth campaigns, because of the unbreakable bonds between industry and government. In the last chapter, she argues that health equity should be tackled in the courts in the same way as civil rights issues, in order to remedy the impacts of U.S. food policy. —Amy Halloran
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
By Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Serviceberry is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s small but mighty argument for gift economies. “I’ve never quite understood something about human economics, and that is the primacy of scarcity as an organizing principle,” she writes. Schooled by plants, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass understands abundance and gratitude as fundamental instead. She asks us to consider the currency of cooperative relationships as an alternative to the market economy, posing her reasoning under the generous berry-like fruits of the serviceberry, a small deciduous tree or shrub that blossoms white in spring.
Native to the Americas, the plant is significant to Indigenous diets as one of the main ingredients in pemmican, a staple of dried berries and meat. Also known as shadbush and shadblow, for blooming during the time shad fish once spawned, the plant—important to many cultures—has other names, too, like sugarplum, sarvis, juneberry, and saskatoon berry. Using examples from ecological economics—not to be confused with environmental economics, which is transactional in nature—Kimmerer lovingly offers the serviceberry and its web of interdependent relationships, which include soil and birds, as a necessary way forward. Why not choose economic biomimicry and cooperation as a model for thriving? —Amy Halloran
Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming
By Leah Garcés
In Transfarmation, Leah Garcés criss-crosses the United States helping farmers transition from industrial animal agriculture to raising hemp and crops people can eat. As president and CEO of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals, Garcés has long been a leader in the animal protection movement: her work led to a New York Times’ 2021 op-ed about the harms of the chicken industry. In 2019, Mercy for Animals founded Transfarmation, a program that helps farmers find alternatives to factory farming, which it views as harmful to animals, the environment, farmworkers, and rural communities.
This quick read, which serves as a primer for that project, is much like Manifesto for a Moral Revolution by Jacqueline Novogratz, as the writing of a leader who spends more time at work in the field than on email. In the book, Garcés helps chicken and pig operations transition to clean, climate-friendly crops including hemp and mushrooms and adopts a few chickens along the way, including one lucky hen aptly named Henrietta. In addition to her accounts of farm visits, Garcés provides hard-to-swallow stats, well-written personal reflections on family and the future, and actionable plans for what farmers—and eaters—can do to build better food systems. —Paolo Bicchieri
Other Notable Titles
Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
By Caroline Eden
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
By Olivia Laing
Radical Food Geographies: Power, Knowledge, and Resistance
Edited by Colleen Hammelman, Charles Z. Levkoe, and Kristin Reynolds
Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook
By Sarah Raven
Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World
By Roger Crowley
Our Recent Books Coverage
Our South: Black Food Through My Lens
By Ashleigh Shanti
The new cookbook from ‘Top Chef’ alum Ashleigh Shanti features recipes from five micro-regions of the American South.
Group Living and Other Recipes
By Lola Milholland
In this memoir of communal living, which celebrates families, relationships, and food, Milholland explores how sharing meals and living space deepens our ability to connect to one another.
Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America
By Sonja Trom Eayrs
A family law attorney chronicles her family’s battle against factory hog farms in Minnesota and the corporate takeover of rural America.
The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future
By Peter Gleick
A water expert discusses agriculture in the Western U.S., the driest part of the country, and how to move toward a sustainable future.
Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere
By Rob Jackson
A climate scientist dives deep into the climate and health impacts of gas stoves and other food-and-climate solutions.
The post Our 2024 Food and Farming Holiday Book Gift Guide appeared first on Civil Eats.
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]]>At Civil Eats, our small but mighty team has a track record of punching above its weight to bring you deeply reported stories that you can’t find anywhere else. We’re honored that this work has been recognized with two dozen journalism awards and nominations this year.
As a nonprofit newsroom, we depend on your support to fund everything we do. Please consider donating to Civil Eats on Giving Tuesday. Your donation will automatically be doubled through our participation in NewsMatch, a national initiative to support journalism that strengthens democracy. Through December 31, individual donations up to $1,000, including memberships, will be matched through the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN). Donations of $100 or more also will include a sustainably sourced, limited-edition Civil Eats tote bag.
As we approach 2025 and a new administration, we are doubling down on our commitment to produce critical, investigative journalism on the American food system, and to hold the powerful accountable. We will continue to also produce solutions-oriented journalism, which spotlights efforts by communities to address the food system’s most pressing problems at a time when trust in our democratic institutions will be tested.
With your help, Civil Eats will be able to dig deeper into these emerging issues and continue this vital work. From everyone at Civil Eats, thank you for your unwavering support.
We proudly share with you our 2024 awards and nominations:
We won a 2024 excellence in newsletters award for our members-only newsletter, The Deep Dish, from the Online News Association (ONA). We were also a finalist for general excellence in online journalism (micro newsroom) award from ONA, which honors excellence in digital journalism.
We won four awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
- Former Contributing Editor Lee van der Voo won in the Business, Including Marketing category for reporting on the abusive and, in some cases, deadly working conditions of marine observers in the tuna industry.
- Contributor Alice Driver received the Donald Robinson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism for her reporting on the Honduran spiny lobster industry, included in our investigative series Walanthropy.
- Former Senior Reporter Wesley Brown won in the Social Change category for his story on the historically systemic racism behind the USDA’s lack of financial support for Black farmers.
- Contributor Daniel Walton won an honorable mention in the Food and Drink category for his story about farmers who see untapped potential in wild tree crops like acorn and black walnut.
Staff Reporter Grey Moran won a Covering Climate Now award for food and agriculture reporting for their story, “How Crop Insurance Prevents Some Farmers From Adapting to Climate Change.” The judges noted, “In this stellar investigation, journalist Grey Moran shows how the program often, ironically, fails to benefit—and can even penalize—farmers adopting climate-friendly practices endorsed by the very same USDA. Following publication, the department said it would reexamine practices dictated by the crop insurance program and better align them with the agency’s climate goals. Stories about niche government policy often struggle to engage audiences, but this one is imminently accessible. One judge put Moran’s accomplishment succinctly: ‘A compelling, readable, sharable story about crop insurance? Amazing.’”
Contributor Kate Nelson won second place in health reporting in the 2024 Indigenous Media Awards for her story about an Indigenous-led team transforming a Minneapolis Superfund site into an urban farm. Nelson also received an honorable mention for best environmental coverage for her story about how Alaska’s climate-driven fisheries collapse is devastating Indigenous communities.
Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held and Contributor Ciara O’Brien were finalists in the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) 2024 Dateline Awards in the Online, Non-Breaking News category for their reporting on virtual fences for livestock and a new Lidl supermarket, respectively. Photojournalist Jake Price was a finalist in the online photography category for his photo essay on DC Central Kitchen’s efforts to fight summer hunger in the nation’s capital.
Staff Reporter Grey Moran won first place for Print Features from SPJ’s Louisiana chapter for their reporting on the challenges U.S. shrimpers endure in the face of cheap imports.
Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held and contributors Alice Driver and Aaron Van Neste were finalists for a James Beard Foundation Media Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting for our 2023 investigation series on Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation, Walanthropy. Contributor Virginia Gewin was a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Media Award for Excellence in Health Reporting for her story about toxins and pollution around California’s Salton Sea.
From North American Agricultural Journalists (NAAJ), Staff Reporter Moran won first place in the 2024 Writing Contest for News Reporting for their story, “How Crop Insurance Prevents Some Farmers from Adapting to Climate Change.” Moran also won third place from NAAJ in the Next Generation/Young Writer category for their reporting. Held won third place from NAAJ for Feature Reporting for her story, “Walmart’s ‘Regenerative Foodscape,’” part of our 2023 Walanthropy investigative series. Both Moran and former Executive Editor Twilight Greenaway received honorable mentions in the same category for their reporting on paraquat and regenerative chicken farming, respectively. Held also won an honorable mention from NAAJ in the Ongoing Reporting/Series category for her reporting on the farm bill.
Contributor Alice Driver won the Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for her book, The Life and Death of the American Worker, which includes reporting previously published in our investigative series, Injured and Invisible.
Contributor Gabriel Pietrorazio won an honorary mention from the Military Reporters and Editors for his reporting on food insecurity in the military.
We’re thankful that our work has been recognized. But we’re not on this mission alone, so please join us and consider donating, becoming a member, or giving a gift membership today. From all of us at Civil Eats, thank you for being part of our community.
The post This #GivingTuesday, Help Us Celebrate Civil Eats’ Big Wins appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>The post The Path Forward for Food and Ag appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Civil Eats has covered the U.S. food system for nearly 16 years. In that time, we’ve been at the forefront of reporting on the policies—some arcane, some mundane—that impact everyone’s most basic daily need: food. From the farm bill to food justice to deep coverage of how the pandemic cratered our food system, we’ve pursued complicated and often underreported stories while lifting up underrepresented voices. Throughout, we’ve highlighted solutions to daunting challenges and interviewed the people working to create change.
Now, a week past the 2024 election, we’re at the brink of momentous shifts in how our food system functions—and for whom. Food and ag organizations across the country are weighing in on what the election could bring. What better time to ask our Civil Eats advisors and other leading thinkers in food about how they’re responding to this moment, what to expect from the new administration, and how to move forward? Below, they’ve generously shared their thoughts and insights on the future of food and ag during Trump 2.0. We encourage you to continue this conversation by adding your voices in the comments section.
Chef José Andrés, founder of the Global Food Institute at George Washington University
Food is not just fuel—it’s a powerful way to strengthen communities, rebuild economies, heal the planet, and improve health. But as a country, we often fail to give food the importance it deserves, and too many policies in Washington overlook the real solutions I see in small towns and big cities all across America.
The current political climate of division and exclusion leaves everyday Americans—hardworking farmers, first-generation restaurant owners, children in need of a healthy school meal—vulnerable. When policies fail to recognize their struggles, it isn’t just an oversight; it’s a neglect of the people who make up the fabric of our nation.
But I know we can prioritize food in a way that brings dignity and prosperity to all. That’s why I created the Global Food Institute at George Washington University to help America’s leaders—in government, business, and nonprofits—use food as a force for change. We must ensure that those who feed America are able to feed themselves. This is especially true for immigrant communities who keep our food system functioning, from fields to kitchens. Without them, the system collapses. Fair labor practices and common-sense immigration reform are the solutions, not deportations and family separations that destabilize our country and betray its ideals.
In my work responding to emergencies with World Central Kitchen, I don’t see red or blue communities; just neighbors feeding neighbors. Hunger knows no political party, and access to food should never be withheld or politicized. Working together, I know we can tackle hunger and the many problems it represents, such as poverty and poor health.
I believe we’ll find our strength in building longer tables where everyone is welcome. By coming together around food, we can find common ground and fuel ourselves to continue fighting for a healthier America. This is a moment to choose compassion over division, to recognize that food is a right, not a privilege. Together, let’s make food our first act of solidarity.
Mark Bittman, author and journalist
The plan “before” was to make sure that SNAP benefits remained intact, that the few significant steps forward by the Biden administration in food and farming were preserved, that conditions for immigrants would not worsen, that food workers’ rights would be improved, that newly invigorated agencies would take tougher stands on the uses of pesticides and antibiotics, and that there’d be some progress in supporting new and would-be farmers, marginalized farmers, and farmers who dare to practice agroecology.
Most of those forward-looking goals will have to be pared back. The most important fights are likely to be around defending farmworkers’ and other foodworkers’ right to stay in the United States; against absurd protectionist tariffs; to protect SNAP, and farm conservation programs, and anything progressive that’s happened in USDA; and to continue to hammer home the reality of the need to deal with the climate crisis.
We might have imagined we were finished with some of that, and indeed, a Harris administration likely would have given us opportunities to push a progressive food and farming agenda to a new point, especially because we imagined less energy would have been spent on immigrants’ rights, the climate struggle, protecting SNAP.
We know that Trump is mercurial and unpredictable, and we don’t know where the emphases of his new team will lie. What we think we know—are pretty sure of—is that the actions of the new government will have to be fought with renewed energy and that we will have victories amid our defeats.
We must be prepared for opportunities as they arise, and to find new battlegrounds on which we might win. But at the very least we can be pretty sure we’re going to be struggling to hold the line against cuts in entitlement programs like SNAP, and against the threat and promise of mass exportations, which are inhumane, immoral, and even unpractical. This food system cannot work without foreign-born workers.
Navina Khanna, executive director and co-founder, HEAL Food Alliance
This is not the outcome we wanted, but it is an outcome we’re prepared for. The deep love each of us holds for our communities, our shared vision of what is possible, and the ways that we work together continues to give me hope for the fight that is to come.
HEAL launched just weeks after Trump took office in 2017, and since then, we’ve seen time and again that in moments of crisis, organizations across the movement have come together to block the worst outcomes, protect each other and our wins, and build a future in which each of us can thrive. I have so much confidence that we will continue to do so, but we need to be organized.
For example, there are very real threats already being made to immigrant communities, including food and farmworkers. Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who is expected to be named deputy chief of staff for policy in the next term, never really went away, but with him back in the administration, we can expect further attempts to roll back support for BIPOC producers. We know that SNAP and school meals are at risk.
This moment calls on us to show up together. We need to stay connected, to deepen our relationships with each other, and to be ready to mobilize when our communities come under attack. This moment depends on all of us bringing our strengths—communications prowess, legal expertise, organizing skills, financial resources, ancestral knowledge—to the fight.
And even as we fight the worst, now is also a time for us to continue to build a new world. As a movement, folks organizing for food and farm justice have long imagined and cultivated systems that exist beyond and outside of a political system that was never designed for life to thrive.
May we continue to nourish and grow what we are building, and with our blood and political ancestors at our back, to claim power with our people.
Anna Lappé, executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food
There’s a lot about the next Trump Administration that has me deeply concerned, from the implications of electing a climate denier to the White House to the possibility of his making good on his dark promises to deport millions of our friends and neighbors, defund the World Health Organization, and much more. But I’m particularly focused on what this administration will mean for our collective efforts to make our food systems healthier, more resilient, and fairer, particularly in taking on the corporate consolidation that’s increasing prices and giving us less choice.
In the weeks just before the election, the voices of the Make America Healthy Again Trump backers, fueled by millions in dark money, were telling us that Trump will take on the pesticide industry and toxics in food, will tackle junk food, and much more. I and many colleagues were dubious about the proclamations: Trump’s track record points in the opposite direction. His decision to appoint a former tobacco lobbyist with ties to the ultra-processed foods industry as Chief of Staff seems to indicate our concerns were well-founded.
With the election behind us, it’s important to look ahead and be clear-eyed about what this administration will try to do (see this insightful take from the Union of Concerned Scientists) and support the groups and media outlets (like, ahem, Civil Eats) that will help us make sense of the implications of this administration’s actions and what we can do to exert our voices for what we believe in. We can also work to ensure that the litany of perilous possibilities under the Trump Administration do not paralyze us with fear or drain us with despair.
Instead, try internalizing the portmanteau of one of my favorite writers, Astra Taylor, who gives us this twist on labor activist Joe Hill’s line “Don’t mourn, organize!” As Astra notes, we can do both. We can mourganize.
Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health emerita, New York University
I wish I had a crystal ball to say how food and agriculture issues would play out over the next four years, but all I have to go on is what Trump and his followers say. If we take them at their word, then we must expect them to implement their Project 2025 plan, which replaces one deep state with another that favors conservative business interests and ideology. This calls for replacing staff in federal agencies with Trump loyalists and dismantling them, stopping the USDA from doing anything to prevent climate change, reforming farm subsidies (unclear how), splitting the farm bill to deal separately with agricultural supports and SNAP, reducing SNAP participation by reinstating work requirements and reducing the Thrifty Food Plan, and making it more difficult for kids to participate in school meals.
On the other hand, some of the plans make sense: eliminating checkoff programs and repealing the sugar program, for example. So do some of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s goals: Make America Healthy Again by focusing on chronic disease prevention, getting harmful chemicals out of kids’ foods, and getting rid of conflicts of interest among researchers and agency staff. It’s too early to know how much of this is just talk, but I’m planning to do what I can to oppose measures I view as harmful, but to strongly support the ones I think will be good for public health.
Raj Patel, author, activist, and research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin
Milei, Musk, and Modi. Now Trump. It’s little comfort that inflation has caused a global mood of anti-incumbency after COVID. When President Biden said he’d run again, my heart sank, and only bobbed up again briefly when it became clear, after the first debate, that his campaign was doomed. Who knows what might have happened with a Democratic candidate who could credibly have recognized the pain that inflation had caused the working class, who acknowledged the rising rates of child hunger after the lapse of the pandemic-era SNAP expansion, and who could have offered a credible alternative to the Biden-Harris administration? (The anti-price-gouging Harris disappeared quickly.)
So, now we have a second Trump term, set to be crueler and more destructive than the first. These waters aren’t uncharted, though. Argentinian anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei won a mandate in late 2023 to take a chainsaw to government. He did, and has since laid off tens of thousands of government employees. Hunger rates are soaring. He’s now flying over to meet Musk and Trump to advise them on how to do the same.
Milei isn’t the only relevant international leader. Modi is too. In India, fascism has squatted for over a decade under Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist government. The persecution of enemies within has left dozens of journalists behind bars, defunded civil society, and created a permanent climate of fear for minority groups, particularly Muslims. Under cover of this nationalism, Modi is passing laws for his billionaire friends and gutting the parts of government that stand in the way. This is part of a broader right-wing international movement: the Atlas Network’s fingerprints are all over Project 2025.
If they’re coordinating and learning, we should be too. There’s much to study.
Look to how Milei’s project was frustrated in Argentina by widespread protests and strikes. His initial and far more radical project couldn’t advance because of overwhelming public opposition, led by unions and civil-society groups. In India, the plan to remove certain kinds of price supports and government markets for farmers resulted in the world’s largest protest, involving 250 million people, led by farmers’ movements but soon spreading across society. It was successful: Modi had to back down, marking a turning point that would result in his losing full control of government in the subsequent elections.
Here in the U.S., although we lack the union density and peasant movements, we are not without hope. The pandemic was an invitation to relearn the arts of mutual aid and protection. We’ll need those skills, together with the more atrophied ones of international solidarity, against the Trump administration. Protecting the families targeted for deportation is a moral calling, and it’ll take organization—local, national, and international—to fight back. But there’s little choice: This is the fight of and for our lives.
Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, author of Farming While Black and Black Earth Wisdom
A few days after the crushing election results were announced, community members gathered at Soul Fire Farm for our annual gleaning day –harvesting every last morsel of abundance from the fecund acres and taking it home to share with our communities. Through tears of heartbreak, rage, and overwhelm, we took note that the land continued to do what she always does–generously create life and beauty. So must we. Here’s how.
Squad Up. We protect us. We need to squad up to directly protect people who are targeted—immigrants, farm workers, queer and trans folks, the Muslim community, et al. We can’t have depleted ranks at this moment, so the circle of “we” must widen to include others who may not be in our ideologically pure echo chambers. Empire thrives on atomization, division, and isolation. We resist by building trust and coalitions, engaging in mutual aid, organizing outside the system, and creating unified strategy. Follow and support the campaigns of @undocuprofessionals @nativeorganizersalliance @indigenousrising @lylajune @ibramxk @adriennemareebrown @justice4blackgirls @zhaabowekwe
Ramify. We need to branch out. Remember that the butterfly of transformative social change has two wings, and electoral politics sits on just one of them. On the other: Grassroots reform and harm reduction. We won’t give up on policy pressure and defending civic institutions in the next four years, but we also need to strengthen and fortify our other strategies. It’s up to us, BIPOC farmers, earth workers, queer folks, women and nonbinary people, working class folks, immigrants, and all people of conscience to organize, heal, and build together. Check out this advice from Waging Nonviolence.
Root in Love. Hate will not prevail in the end. There is time for grief, rage, and heartbreak, but it is not a time to blame other demographic groups in the community for this painful outcome. Don’t let them change you, exhaust you, and make you hate. Our playbook’s DNA is love and interdependence. With one another’s support, we will carry on in the long struggle for liberation.
Zoom Out. The world we are dreaming does not settle for having a slightly more benign power-holder on the throne–it dispenses with the throne all together. It’s a world free of colonialism, militarized violence, capitalist greed, hatred of the perceived other, supremacy, and plunder of Mother Earth. It’s a world of compassion, justice, and interdependence. This work is a marathon relay, not a solitary sprint. Our ancestors have faced the burning of the world time and again, and they continued to carry seeds, sing songs, nurse children, and listen to our more-than-human kin that point the way. We are not to give up. We are to continue step by step, hand in hand, hearts leading the way.
Michael Pollan, author, journalist
I’ll be closely watching the development (or abandonment) of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda set forth by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Leaving aside his vaccine and fluoride nuttiness, Kennedy injected into the campaign a whole set of concerns about food and health in children that resonated, especially with mothers: ultra-processed foods in school lunch; childhood cancer and chronic disease; the reliance on drugs to insure health rather than diet; the need to reform agricultural policy to improve public health. Trump picked up on this late in the campaign and promised to give RFK Jr. the authority to implement his agenda.
Trump did surprisingly well with mothers, and MAHA could well be the reason. I seriously doubt Trump will keep his promise to Kennedy—Big Food and Pharma would rebel, and surely he’s more committed to deregulation than public health. But already Joel Salatin, the regenerative farmer, has been asked to serve as an advisor in the USDA. What happens to MAHA—an issue that long ago should have belonged to the Democrats—promises to be one of the more interesting stories of the next few years.
Ashanté M. Reese, author, associate professor, department of African and African diaspora studies, the University of Texas at Austin
After I saw the election results and after I’d read texts from the wee hours of the morning, I sent a text of my own: “We for sure have a [mandate] and it’s been consistent: take care of each other. In very real ways. Real care happens at the community scale. Governments can make that easier or harder. But they can’t stop it from happening.”
This is what I believe to my very core, and this is what I will continue to be invested in. There is no way to avoid the reality of what elections mean for our movements and ourselves. This administration has pledged to destroy the earth, continue to pillage and plunder other parts of the world, and rip through the few social safety nets we still have. That is scary. But imperial power isn’t the only form of power.
My hope is that what we are calling a moment turns out to be more than a simple blip in history. My hope is that more people will reckon with a fundamental reality that the state and policy have failed to make equity and liberation priorities. That is not likely to change. My hope is that we coalesce around the belief that now is the time to collaborate and imagine and experiment and fail and build the most radical version of collective society we can. My hope is that we practice collaboration, imagining, experimenting, and building at every scale of our lives; that we do not cede that sacred, life-sustaining work to the state.
But we cannot build on a large scale what we do not practice at an everyday scale. To me, this means that the building blocks of justice and liberation—in the food system and otherwise—are organized, rearranged, and laid in our organizations, in our neighborhoods, in our families, and beyond. I am orienting my work and whole being towards intentionally gathering and building right where I am. I hope you are, too.
Ruth Reichl, writer, cook, editor
My fear is that Trump really will carry out his threat to deport all undocumented immigrants. It will, of course, be a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions.
Beyond that, the impact on our food system will be catastrophic. Our entire food system relies on the work of undocumented immigrants. Without them we will no longer be able to grow food (as opposed to commodities) in this country. Commodity crops—wheat, corn, soy and the like—can be harvested by machines, but the produce that we eat requires human harvesters. The plain fact is that Americans will not do that work.
Even if they can find people willing to harvest their crops, independent regenerative farmers across the country will be competing with foreign farmers who pay their workers very little. This cheap produce will flood the markets and put American farmers out of business.
We will then be completely dependent upon imported produce that has very little nutritional value, creating an even larger crisis of obesity and diabetes. Combined with the possible end of the Affordable Care Act, this will create a serious national health crisis.
Restaurants, which also rely on undocumented immigrants, will be stressed by the new policies too. Prices will rise, and a huge proportion of American restaurants will go out of business—leaving us with a thriving fast food system that relies on commodity crops and robot workers.
I plan to spend my time trying to make people understand how important our food choices are to our health, our communities, and our environment. And trying to persuade them that paying more for food is ultimately a bargain.
Teresa Romero, president, United Farm Workers
Farmworkers of all immigration statuses are continuing to work to feed America today, just like they do every day. Farmworkers don’t care if the food they are picking is going to end up on a Democrat or Republican’s table—they just want to be paid fairly and treated with dignity for their essential work and go home safely to their families each night.
Right now, many farmworkers are fearful. They worry about being separated from their children, or the holes in their communities that would be left by mass detention or deportation. Yet, most have lived through one Trump presidency already. They have deep and strong roots in the country which their labor feeds. And they know this country’s agricultural economy would collapse without them. Farmworkers are resilient. They have to be.
The United Farm Workers (UFW) will continue to organize, helping farmworkers to empower themselves. The threat of deportation is commonly used to keep workers afraid, but our worker leaders are courageous. We will look to the wider labor movement and our movement’s many supporters to stand in solidarity with immigrant workers and refuse to allow them to be intimidated into accepting unjust or dangerous working conditions.
We will also continue our advocacy efforts, both large and small. The UFW has always worked to protect farmworkers. We will continue to do absolutely everything we can, but we can’t do it alone. We will need support.
Ricardo Salvador, advisor, Union of Concerned Scientists
The second Trump administration was voted in because of avian influenza. Here’s how that worked: As numerous post-mortems have documented, significant numbers of 2020 Democratic voters shifted to the Republican column in 2024, and their top issue was the economy. Specifically, “about 9 in 10 voters were very or somewhat concerned about the cost of groceries.” Eggs are the most cited example of food prices gone wild, because anyone who shops has seen their cost rise 85 percent over the past year. But food costs don’t stem from President Biden’s mysterious failure to twiddle a Food Price Knob in the Oval Office. Instead, they reflect the practices and values of an industrial food system operating within a highly distorted market system.
We depend on a concentrated, specialized, and linear food system that is easily disrupted, most notably as a pandemic, regional wars, and drought coincided over the past four years. Specifically, the model of producing eggs in massive facilities housing millions of laying hens, and concentrating those facilities geographically, leads to periodic outbreaks and the rapid spread of highly contagious diseases such as avian flu. Millions of hens must be euthanized, and facilities must be closed and sanitized to attempt to eliminate the contagion. Which is exactly what happened in Colorado this past summer, constraining supply, driving up prices, and bringing us to the present straits.
The outcome is that, a week past the election, rather than working on policies to transform the food system, President-Elect Trump is rapidly assembling a governing team to deliver measures that played well on the campaign trail but will exacerbate high food prices by further reducing the supply of eggs, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and meat. This will most certainly result from his promised deportation and restrictive immigration programs. His doubling down on the fossil-fuel economy and sanctioning the repurposing of “climate-smart” funding at the Department of Agriculture will further affect future food prices by accelerating the disruption of the predictable weather patterns that make crop production possible.
A lesson well known to Civil Eats readers is that food literacy matters. This election turned on a series of false narratives foisted on the electorate, with those about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and “Kamala Harris’ policies” being directly responsible for high egg (and food) prices. As our leading food voices have not tired of reminding us, competent food and agriculture discourse needs to be part of the nation’s policy conversations at the highest levels. And those of us in the business of informing public perceptions and narratives about food, from scientists to experienced practitioners, need to redouble our efforts—and correct misinformation wherever it occurs. As we have seen, the costs of not doing so are existential.
Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, and founder of Chez Panisse restaurant
I know that there are many things to fear: I am worried about international separation. And global connections, which are so important for climate and for peace.
But I still believe in the power of gathering and the education of the senses—and I believe that the public school system could transform agriculture, health, and education overnight.
We have a lot of enlightened politicians still in power. It might not seem like it right now, but they are there, and more may be coming. I have known the farmer Joel Salatin for years and to think that he might be an advisor to the USDA is amazing.
My work moving forward will be exactly what I have been doing and have believed in for decades, with this added mandate: Could we use the new interest and energy in regenerative farming that has swelled over the past decade? Could we harness it to support school-purchased food directly from local, regenerative, and organic farmers and ranchers who take care of the land and their farmworkers? I believe School Supported Agriculture could be a national and global policy that could address the climate crisis and boost local economies immediately. This is what I continue to call a “delicious revolution.”
On October 19, 2024, we gathered 200 farmers, educators, activists, and nonprofit leaders in Washington, D.C. around the table for an example of what school lunch could be. We called it Climate Food Hope, and it made me realize a few things. We all have something to contribute to the big picture. That day, we brought together people from around the nation and the world to address climate change through regenerative agriculture, and that can continue. I believe it’s possible for school-supported agriculture and universal school lunch to be everyday realities, improving the health of our children and our future on this planet.
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]]>As part of our mission, Civil Eats reports on the U.S. food system’s disproportionate impact on immigrants and communities of color. Immigrant food system workers toil in the nation’s restaurants, farms, and food processing facilities, and have some of the least visible but most strenuous and dangerous jobs in the country. Many are underpaid and vulnerable to food insecurity and workplace abuses. They were also subjected to unprecedented risks during the early days of the pandemic. Despite this, their contributions to the food system are overwhelmingly positive.
In fact, immigrants form the backbone of the U.S. food and agricultural industries, which would face unimaginable strain without their human labor. They also demonstrate remarkable resilience and creative ingenuity in their own cooking and farming, introducing us to their cultural traditions and enriching us as a society.
To counter the negative narratives currently rampant in this country, we selected just a few of our many stories from the recent past that demonstrate how immigrants play an important, outsize role in planting, picking, and processing the food on our plates. They also make up the very fabric of our culture and make us what we are as a nation.
We will continue to tell their stories.
How a Community Gardener Grew Food for Her Family, Quit Her Job at McDonald’s, and Started a Farm
A Q&A with Maximina Hernández Reyes, who credits her success to a Portland, Oregon, food network called Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative.
A Community of Growers
How East New York Farms builds food security and provides jobs for its neighborhood.
Photo courtesy of ALBA
This Group Has Helped Farmworkers Become Farm Owners for More Than 2 Decades
California’s farmworkers face untold barriers accessing the land, capital, and training needed to strike out on their own. For 20 years, ALBA has been slowly changing the landscape for this important group of aspiring growers.
The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Immokalee, Florida
The majority of migrant farmworkers live below the federal poverty line, without easy access to healthy foods or affordable housing. To survive, many in this tight-knit community have found strategies for mutual aid and collaborative resilience.
This Community Garden Helps Farmworkers Feed Themselves. Now It’s Facing Eviction.
The members of Tierras Milperas in Watsonville, Calif. are struggling to maintain access to their garden. Similar stories are unfolding across the country.
A New Film Documents the Immigrant Farmworker Journey
‘First Time Home,’ a short film created by American children of Triqui farmworkers, offers an unscripted, authentic glimpse into life for farmworker families—and why people choose to sacrifice their lives in Mexico for opportunities up North.
On the Rural Immigrant Experience: ‘We Come With a Culture, Our Own History, and We’re Here to Help’
Organizer Gladys Godinez on the way immigrants change, and are changed by, rural America.
The Fight for L.A.’s Street Food Vendors
Getting a permit is difficult and expensive, and the state food code is prohibitively complex for small-scale vendors. A coalition is working to help protect this important economic and cultural tradition.
Photo by Sarah Sax
A Vietnamese Farmers’ Cooperative in New Orleans Offers a Lesson in Resilience
VEGGI Co-op has weathered Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. Now, it’s facing the twin threats of the coronavirus pandemic and climate change.
Immigrants Lift Up a Food System in Need of Reform
Farmworker advocates argue that if we want to revitalize the food economy, we must embrace—and not criminalize—immigrants.
The Halal Restaurant Helping Build Community in Suburban Detroit
Bismallah Kabob has become a gathering hotspot for Detroit’s Bangladeshi community—and is building bridges between immigrants and longtime residents.
A New American Dream: The Rise of Immigrants in Rural America
The upsurge of immigration has inarguably helped revitalize dying towns, especially in farm country.
Immigrant Farmers Help Grow Organic Ag in Wisconsin and Beyond
Hmong farmers Blia and Phua Thao put their 40-plus years of experience to work in Spring Valley, where they grow organic produce entirely by hand.
Immigrant Women are Providing a Taste of Oaxaca in California’s Central Valley
Diverse immigrant communities are forging new paths and bringing traditional culture to rural America.
A Cookbook Highlights the Power of Immigrants to Make Positive Change
Leyla Moushabeck, editor of The Immigrant Cookbook, talks about the power of food, and immigrants, in shaping this country.
On Cleveland’s Largest Urban Farm, Refugees Gain Language and Job Skills
The Refugee Empowerment Agricultural Program expects to harvest 22,000 pounds of produce this year, while helping refugees find a community.
Refugee Farmers are Putting Down Roots in North Carolina
Transplanting Traditions Community Farm is helping Burmese farmers create new community.
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]]>When Civil Eats launched in 2009, no major media outlets focused on the relationship between food and other significant social and political issues. For the past 15 years, we have led the charge in creating robust conversations around food and farming, and worked to make complicated, underreported stories more accessible to a mainstream audience.
In that time, our stories have had significant impact and reach, thanks in part to support from our readers and donors. We raised an unprecedented $100,000 via Kickstarter in 2013; we were named Publication of the Year in 2014 by the prestigious James Beard Foundation; we were inducted into the Library of Congress in 2019; we won a 2022 IACP Award for best newsletter for our members-only monthly column, The Deep Dish, which also won best newsletter from the Online News Association in 2024; we were awarded a James Beard Foundation Media Award for our 2022 investigative series on animal agriculture workers, Injured and Invisible; and we were nominated for best micro newsroom by the Online News Association twice, in 2023 and 2024. Here is a list of our many other awards and recognitions.
In order to make it all work, in 2015, we put up a paywall—like many independent nonprofit news organizations have done. Readers could access a small number of articles for free, and they could pay to become a Civil Eats member and get full access to our reporting. Our members care about independent food systems news, and the membership program has been critical in supporting our work as a small, nonprofit newsroom.
We’ve always wanted to remove our paywall in order to make our journalism free and accessible to everyone. And in our surveys, we heard that sentiment from members, too. Because the membership program provided a significant amount of our budget, removing the paywall has been a constant concern. Until now.
We are thrilled to announce that, in honor of our 15th anniversary, two generous funders, the 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, and GRACE Communications Foundation, have provided us funding to help us remove our paywall for one year. Our reporting will now be free to everyone, everywhere.
But we will still need your support! In order to keep our paywall down, we’re launching a membership drive to keep the site free, open, and accessible to all beyond this first year.
Without you, Civil Eats’ stories don’t just go unread—they go untold. Become a member today by making a contribution to ensure our vital reporting continues and thrives.
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]]>The post Civil Eats Welcomes Momo Chang as Senior Editor appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Seasoned journalist Momo Chang joins Civil Eats as a senior editor. She is the former co-director of Oakland Voices, a community journalism training program and outlet of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
Chang is a longtime journalist focusing on food, justice, health, and environmental stories. She is the former features editor and writer for Hyphen magazine, where she received national Asian American Journalists Association awards for her coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. She is also the former content manager at the Center for Asian American Media.
“I cannot be more thrilled to join Civil Eats’ editorial team,” Chang said. “I look forward to helping build on the canon of work that Civil Eats has been publishing for the past 15 years. Food is central to our lives, and Civil Eats maintains a vital role in bringing relevant information, analysis, and storytelling to the public.”
Chang spent her early years in journalism as a staff writer at the Oakland Tribune. Chang’s journalism career has been focused on elevating undertold stories, from the health impacts on refugee Vietnamese American women who work in nail salons to an Asian American farmer saving heritage seeds. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Guardian US, Edible San Francisco, Bon Appétit, PBS, and other outlets.
“Momo Chang is an extremely skilled editor, educator, and award-winning reporter,” said Naomi Starkman, founder, executive director, and former editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. “We very much look forward to working with her as a senior member of our team.”
Chang received a B.A. in Mass Communications and English from U.C. Berkeley, and an M.A. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Fusing her love of education and writing, she jumped into journalism after a short stint teaching at a high school.
In 2019, Chang was a part of a team to receive a James Beard Journalism Award for a San Francisco Chronicle project on Chinese regional restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. More recently, she wrote about commercial crabbers operating small vessels in the Bay Area amidst stricter fishing regulations. Chang also brings her deep community connections in the world of journalism and media to her new role at Civil Eats.
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]]>The post 17 Food and Ag Approaches to Tackling the Climate Crisis appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Although the food system generates one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, it has largely been excluded from the climate agendas of most governments. Only last year did the food system become a major topic of international debate, during the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
But as Civil Eats’ reporting has shown, the food and agriculture system is full of examples of how farmers, ranchers, fishers, chefs, restaurants, grocery stores, and consumers are addressing climate change, with strategies that sequester carbon, slash emissions, save water, reduce plastics, and open new markets.
Farmers, for example, are experimenting with the wild seed relatives of domestic crops that may be able to withstand extreme weather. Researchers have also discovered that kelp growing alongside mussels and oysters can act like a sponge, soaking up excess nutrients while increasing critical oxygen levels in surrounding waters. And lawmakers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are crafting policies that support local food systems and regenerative agriculture.
Here are some of the most important and promising climate solutions stories we published this year.
As Saltwater Encroaches on Farms, Solutions Emerge From the Marshes
In the Mid-Atlantic, sea level rise due to climate change is already changing what farmers can grow.
These State Lawmakers Are Collaborating on Policies that Support Regenerative Agriculture
Progressive state legislators often find themselves in a David-and-Goliath battle against the conventional ag industry. One organization is equipping them with resources to support producers using regenerative practices instead.
Investment Is Flowing to US Grass-fed Beef Again. Will It Scale Up?
Rupert Murdoch’s Montana ranch is at the center of an effort to get grass-fed beef into mainstream grocery stores; others are using investments to build new markets entirely.
At Climate Dinners Hosted by Chefs Sam Kass and Andrew Zimmern, The Meal Is The Message
To create awareness and inspire action, their carefully curated meals feature coffee, chocolate, and other foods that will become costlier and more difficult to produce due to climate change.
Micro Solar Leases: A New Income Stream for Black Farmers in the South?
EnerWealth Solutions wants to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Black farmers and landowners in the Carolinas.
Can Taller Cover Crops Help Clean the Water in Farm Country?
In Minnesota, a local water quality program might serve as a model for incentivizing the next steps in regenerative farming.
Regenerative Beef Gets a Boost from California Universities
The U.C. system is using its purchasing power to buy grass-fed meat from local ranchers for its 10 universities and five medical centers.
Fungi Are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil Carbon
By tapping into underground fungal networks, farmers are learning how to build lush, spongy soil that supports healthy plants and stores carbon underground.
Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.
The Fair Food Program offers the strongest, legally binding protocols to keep people safe when politicians fall short.
Vineyards Are Laying the Groundwork for a Regenerative Farm Future
A new study finding that regenerative practices build more soil carbon in vineyards points to a path for the industry to create broader models for agriculture.
Seeds From Wild Crop Relatives Could Help Agriculture Weather Climate Change
The hardy wild cousins of domesticated crops can teach us how to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future.
New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
USDA’s nutrition standards aim to support farmers by increasing the number of schools getting fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats from nearby farms.
Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change
Nearly a quarter of U.S. mammal species are on the endangered species list. Researchers say farming with biodiversity in mind may help stave off further decline.
Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee
Farmers, researchers, and coffee devotees are refocusing on agroforestry and developing hardier varieties and high-tech beanless brews to save our morning cup of Joe.
Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish?
Seaweed farms on both coasts are beginning to take hold, tapping into decades of painstaking science, and could help shellfish thrive in waters affected by climate change and pollution.
Zero-Waste Grocery Stores in Growth Mode as Consumers Seek to Ditch Plastic
Food packaging is a significant contributor to the plastic pollution crisis. These stores offer shoppers an alternative.
Rescuing Kelp Through Science
Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.
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]]>The post Our Summer 2024 Food and Farming Book Guide appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>To ring in the first day of summer, we at Civil Eats want to offer you a list of food and farming books we think are worth your time and attention. From memoirs to cultural histories to journalistic inquiries that take on topics ranging from plant intelligence to school food to climate migration, here are 21 titles we hope you’ll enjoy. We even tossed in a few cookbooks to shake up and inspire your summer meal prep. Wishing you time to rest, relax—and read!—in the weeks to come.
If you want to suggest a book we missed, please let us know in the comments below or by email.
Appetite for Change: Soulful Recipes from a North Minneapolis Kitchen
By Appetite for Change, Inc. with Beth Dooley
The dishes throughout Appetite for Change are decidedly Minnesotan. Although items like Cranberry Cream Cheese Bars may have a broad Midwestern appeal, Appetite for Change—the nonprofit behind the book—has a tighter focus. The book’s recipes were developed with a strong connection to the local community. Founded in 2011 as a social enterprise in Minneapolis’ historically Black northside, Appetite for Change uses food, youth programming, and workforce development to build health, wealth, and social change in the community.
So it’s no surprise that Appetite for Change the book is just as much about community stories as it is food. Take the Purple Rain Salad: An ode to Prince, the recipe—which combines raspberries with cabbage, radish, grapes, and more—was co-created by AFC youth and originally sold at Minnesota Twins baseball games. Eaters of all stripes, from vegans and vegetarians to committed carnivores, will discover recipes they’ll love in this book—and come away with a warm and fuzzy feeling about what’s possible in the world, too.
—Cinnamon Janzer
Transforming School Food Politics around the World
Edited by Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert
School meal programs are a public good, a form of community care, and a means of advancing broader aims of justice, food sovereignty, education, environmental sustainability, and health. Or so argue university professors Jennifer Gaddis and Sarah Robert, the book’s editors. This collection of 15 essays spotlights how communities around the world are transforming school food programs—and politics—for the better.
Written by diverse voices, including youth, teachers, school food practitioners, farmers, and policymakers, the essays offer powerful examples of what could be. Japan’s holistic school meal program, for example, involves children in all aspects of the food cycle, from growing it to washing the dishes, in order to foster community spirit and an appreciation for nature and the food system. Brazil’s national requirement that 30 percent of school food ingredients be sourced from local and regional family farms helps empower and fund women agroecological producers. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Rebel Ventures puts youth at the center of innovating nutritious, enjoyable meals for Philadelphia students, while the Yum Yum Bus, the brainchild of school nutrition workers, ensures that all children who need summer meals get them in rural North Carolina.
Gaddis, an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network, and Robert, author of School Food Politics, believe that feminist politics, which value the caring labor that goes into feeding and educating children, is essential for transforming meal programs. Additionally, they say, children must have a voice in policymaking. The book is a hopeful, informative read for anyone who seeks to change school food systems.
—Meg Wilcox
You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime: And Other Lessons from the Food Industry for Creating a More Sustainable Company
By Maisie Ganzler
Many, many years ago, I spent a long time covering the world of sustainable business practices. It left me with a greater understanding of the complexities of trying to make capitalism less extractive—and it also left me quite cynical about the endeavor. So I was interested to read Ganzler’s how-to book about making, achieving, and maintaining food-industry corporate sustainability goals.
Ganzler, who leads the sustainability efforts of Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO), knows what she’s talking about: BAMCO is recognized as a leader in sustainable food service, especially in the areas of climate-consciousness, local food, animal welfare, and worker rights. In You Can’t Market Manure, Ganzler showcases the commitments of high-profile companies like Stonyfield, Whole Foods, Clif Bar, and others, walking readers through how to best pursue corporate sustainability, set meaningful goals (and adjust when you fail), collaborate with partners and adversaries alike, and sell their company’s story.
While Marketing Manure is surely useful for sustainability leaders—and I also would have found it a priceless tool 15 years ago, when sustainability concepts and practices were fledgling—it also underscores the shortcomings of market-led sustainability. An early chapter focuses on improving chicken farming, touting the success of ambitious projects like No Antibiotics Ever and the corporate Better Chicken Commitment. At the time Ganzler wrote the book, these projects were still on a path to success, but, as we reported last month, have since taken a turn for the worse. Despite all the promises, corporate sustainability commitments will only become reality through consistent pressure and vigilance, and they all too easily devolve into mere lip service.
—Matthew Wheeland
Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography
By David Gilbert
Along the slopes of a volcano in Indonesia, a group of Minangkabau Indigenous agricultural workers began quietly reclaiming their land in 1993, growing cinnamon trees, chilies, eggplants, and other foods on the edges of plantations. This marked the beginning of an agrarian movement chronicled by David Gilbert in Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land.
An environmental anthropologist and scholar of social movements, Gilbert meticulously traces the two-decades-long effort to reclaim land that had been violently wrested from the local community by Indonesia’s New Order regime. Now the land is marked by a gate that reads “Tanah Ulayat” (Collective Land), leading into a vibrant, shared food forest where small vegetable plots are sheltered by a canopy of trees.
Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this book offers a vivid, intimate microhistory of the village of Casiavera, where once-landless workers and peasant farmers created “a new political agroecology.” This scholarship is a work of trust, even capturing the eco-political movement’s emotional undercurrents. “We no longer trembled with fear. No, we were not afraid anymore,” said one resident of Casiavera, recalling a blockade they formed to take back the plantations.
Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land is a profound story of what a “land back” movement can look like in practice, reaffirming the possibility that violently occupied land can be reclaimed, from Palestine to Crimea.
—Grey Moran
A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food, and Community in a Modern World
By Jennifer Grayson
The fragility of our food system became more prominent than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, when supply chains struggled to stay tethered due to global trade disruptions. Six months into the pandemic, journalist Jennifer Grayson uprooted herself and her family from their home in Los Angeles and moved to Bend, Oregon, where Grayson embarked on a regenerative agriculture internship.
In A Call to Farms, Grayson highlights profiles of young farmers—from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina to central Massachusetts—working to create more sustainable farms. Underlying each profile are the effects and unique challenges farmers are facing due to a rapidly changing climate. These snapshots provide a window into a world of farming where young people are actively resisting the industrialized monocultures that dominate our landscape; their farms are often grounded in education, sustainable practices, and, above all, community.
Of her own time in Oregon, Grayson writes, “In my quest to bring my family to live with nature and connect to our food, I had forgotten an essential part of the equation: that throughout human history, neither was possible in the absence of community.”
—Nina Elkadi
Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey Toward Personal and Ecological Healing
By Jennifer Grenz
“To use only fragmented pieces of [Indigenous] knowledge is to admire a tree without its roots,” Nlaka’pamux ecologist turned land healer Jennifer Grenz writes in Medicine Wheel for the Planet. The book details her journey to connect head (Western science) with heart (Indigenous worldview)—the latter of which she says is the “missing puzzle piece” in our efforts to re-establish planetary health amid an ongoing climate crisis. The tome complements her work leading the University of British Columbia’s Indigenous Ecology Lab, which aims to restore natural ecosystems and reclaim food systems through community-applied traditional ecological knowledge.
A farm kid at heart, Grenz recalls how her perspective was dismissed and disparaged during her 20 years as a Pacific Northwest field researcher, when she was told time and again that she “takes her work too personally.” Instead of becoming discouraged, she doubled down on her unapologetic application of Indigenous wisdom. She encourages all of us to embrace a Native worldview, including the teachings of the medicine wheel’s four directions (as outlined in her book): the North, which draws upon the knowledge and wisdom of elders; the East, where we let go of colonial narratives and see with fresh eyes; the South, where we apply new-old worldviews to envision a way forward; and the West, where a relational approach to land reconciliation is realized. This, Grenz and other Indigenous thought leaders believe, is the only path forward.
—Kate Nelson
The Good Eater: A Vegan’s Search for the Future of Food
By Nina Guilbeault
Nina Guilbeault admits she isn’t the first person you might expect to write about how veganism entered the mainstream. The Harvard-trained sociologist was born to a modest family in the Soviet Union. “Growing up in the rubble of the collapse, we didn’t have much choice about what to eat,” she writes. But her life changed when her beloved dedushka, or grandfather, was diagnosed with cancer and she started to research the link between diet and disease.
Thus began a global journey to research vegan movements. Guilbeault ventured to Silicon Valley to examine veganism’s transformation from a social movement to a market-based model, and inside the U.S. “vegan mafia” to grasp the millions of dollars behind it. Guilbeault’s personal journey ends up being far more nuanced and complex than she ever expected. “A book I thought would be about veganism turned out to be about the much larger quest of discovering what kind of food system I wanted to build, and how,” she writes. In the end, The Good Eater is a worthwhile examination of eating well in a food system designed for the opposite.
—Naomi Starkman
Food in a Just World: Compassionate Eating in a Time of Climate Change
By Tracey Harris and Terry Gibbs
“Is there such a thing as happy meat?” This treatise on food-system reform poses this question and many others about how political and economic forces often beyond our control shape our dietary choices. How, then, can we foster what the authors term “compassionate eating”?
Learning how food is produced is a significant step, but it’s not easy: “Opacity insulates consumers from the worst practices of food production,” the authors write. Industrialized fish, poultry, and meat processing are far removed from consumer consciousness by design—corporations spend millions lobbying lawmakers to resist transparency, and to eschew regulations that hinder maximum profit.
Another step we can take is recognizing the interconnectedness between the land and its inhabitants, and making this the focus of our decision-making. “What has become increasingly obvious to many is that all struggles for justice for human and nonhuman animals and for environmental harmony are inextricably linked,” the authors write.
Food in a Just World makes this abundantly clear, and points to a largely plant-based diet as a solution for many of our planetary ills. But without significant changes to how we govern ourselves and conduct our economies, this solution seems out of reach. This book reminds us to raise our voices and make individual choices to, as the authors say, “begin to heal ourselves and the planet and everyone on it.”
—Leorah Gavidor
Hedgelands: A Wild Wander around Britain’s Greatest Habitat [U.S. Edition]
By Christopher Hart
Hedgelands is a delightful paean to a staple of British life and a critical part of the nation’s rural ecology: the hedge. Christopher Hart takes readers through the history of the hedge, or hedgerows, as an ancient cultural artifact through to its modern role as a threatened and an unexpectedly diverse and complicated ecological wonderland. Hedgelands reflects deep curiosity about and love for a ubiquitous landscape feature. Hart speaks particularly to “conservation hedges” designed for biodiversity and located along active agricultural lands, estates, woodlands, marshes, and anywhere else human stewardship might imagine.
Conservation hedges are growing in popularity worldwide, and this text makes a passionate case for them. Britons have been using a variety of techniques to shape hedges for centuries, and some well-maintained specimens are hundreds of years old. Within a healthy hedge environment, a criss-cross of branches shelters a variety of plants, insects, mammals, and birds that live in harmony with surrounding fields: an estimated 25 percent of Britain’s mammals, for example, call hedges home. The hedge is a unique combination of built and natural environment that reflects complex co-evolution, shaping both British farming practices and the natural environment.
Hedgelands makes an urgent case for conserving the nation’s remaining hedges—only around 400,000 kilometers of hedging remain, with Hart noting that many are in poor condition, consisting of little more than “stumps”—and the loss of this quintessential British symbol could have a profound ripple effect.
—s.e. smith
The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion
By Jennifer Kabat
The Eighth Moon is a personal history of a place. Set in the Western Catskills in upstate New York, where Kabat moves from London seeking to repair her health, this researched memoir is written in the continuous present, bringing geologic events and Indigenous and white settlements into close perspective.
The book opens during the Anti-Rent wars of the 1840s, with a violent populist uprising against unpayable rents, wherein young white men—tenant farmers—donned leather masks, calico dresses, and pantaloons to hide themselves as they rebelled against their landlords, the Dutch heirs who were part of the lingering feudal rent system installed two centuries earlier.
Kabat links this to other rent strikes over the next two centuries, and to the raging populism that began to percolate in the recession of the late aughts in the 21st century. Throughout, she questions hierarchies of ownership amidst people, plants, and the land, while tracing the communal dreams of utopias and cooperative movements that happened nearby. Her parents worked for and were deeply invested in cooperative business structures, from farms to groceries and electric co-ops. In a way, they set the stage for their daughter’s interrogation of how the socioeconomic structures we choose threaten democracy.
—Amy Halloran
On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America
By Abrahm Lustgarten
On the Move provides a poignant exploration of the climate-driven migration reshaping the American landscape. With scientific rigor and a compelling narrative, Lustgarten vividly portrays communities grappling with escalating climate impacts. As he looks at wildfire-ravaged California,hurricane-battered Gulf Coast towns, and other stricken areas, he critiques the shortsighted policies exacerbating vulnerability, particularly for marginalized communities.
The book’s emotional core lies in its portrayal of the human toll, from Central American farmers forced to abandon lands due to droughts to other once-thriving agricultural communities enduring ongoing depopulation. Lustgarten forecasts a significant northward shift in America’s climate niche and demands proactive social and infrastructural investments for agriculture and food system resilience.
On the Move offers a blueprint for how we can address climate migration, urging comprehensive strategies that integrate environmental defense and social supports. In doing so, the book compels us to confront one of our era’s defining challenges.
—Jonnah Perkins
The Basics of Regenerative Agriculture: Chemical-Free, Nature-Friendly and Community-Focused Food
By Ross Mars
Of all the buzzwords in the agricultural world, “regenerative” is surely among the buzziest. The label bears a certain aura of righteousness as a step beyond “organic,” yet it’s maddeningly difficult to pin down.
The late Australian permaculturist Ross Mars dedicated his career to fleshing out the word in theory and practice. His final work, The Basics of Regenerative Agriculture, offers an accessible primer to a lifetime of learning. Mars argues that any meaningful definition of “regenerative” must concentrate on outcomes, such as increased biodiversity and stable livelihood for farmers, and he shares a list of 20 principles like “enable nutrient cycling” and “enhance ecological succession” as lodestars for the movement. He’s particularly concerned with soil health—“We are technically made of topsoil,” he points out—and readers come away with a deep understanding of how carbon and nutrients flow (aided by charming hand-drawn illustrations).
But Mars believes that a regenerative paradigm shift can heal much more than the soil, transforming all parts of an industrial agricultural system that both contributes to and risks disruption from the climate crisis.
—Daniel Walton
Insatiable City: Food and Race In New Orleans
By Theresa McCulla
Do you know what and who is considered Creole? Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans answers this question and unveils the realities of how New Orleans was founded and who shaped it—both willingly and forcibly. Mixed with doses of food culture, the book delves into the journeys that brought people and food to the city, the lifestyles of free and enslaved Black American laborers along with white powerholders, and tourism.
Each chapter captures a different historical aspect of New Orleans’ food and people. One chapter describes the slave trade blocks that were an attraction for tourists, and another juxtaposes luxurious hotels and food with the atrocious cruelties behind the scenes—laborers eating scraps, or no food at all. “Field and Levee” focuses on the huge sugar industry that dominated New Orleans’ economy and the laborers who worked hard on the boats. And “Mother Market” introduces the Choctaw, who established a public market that became a place for Black Americans to trade and sell goods until they were barred, and the market became a place for travelers and the elite to shop. To top it off, McCulla masterfully ties images to newspaper excerpts and individual stories, dipping you into an earlier time in New Orleans.
—Kalisha Bass
On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family, from Punjab to California
By Jaclyn Moyer
The child of a forbidden marriage between a white American man and a Punjabi-American woman, Jaclyn Moyer did not learn much about her Indian heritage growing up. Because of the family fracture, she never visited India, did not speak the language, and could not replicate her grandmother’s traditional cooking. That changed, however, after Moyer and her partner established an organic farm on 10 acres in the Sierra foothills of California.
The couple decided to grow, in addition to vegetables, an heirloom variety of wheat called Sonora. Moyer soon learned that this variety of wheat originated in Punjab, the region in northern India where her mother was born. “Might this obscure wheat contain within it a door to my own heritage?” she asks. “Could cultivating it offer me an opportunity to make up for all that had not passed down to me?”
In On Gold Hill, Moyer weaves together her attempt to grow the grain with the story she unearths of her family through the generations. She layers these personal narratives with the larger histories of wheat cultivation over the millennia and the more recent organic farming movement. Moyer writes with beautiful, evocative prose. She does not romanticize her own farming experience, or the global chain of events at the center of today’s food and farming systems. This well-researched memoir about identity, heritage, and the systems that feed us is sweet, insightful, and challenging from the first page—and very much worth a read.
—Christina Cooke
Plant Magic: A Celebration of Plant-Based Cooking for Everyone
By Desiree Nielsen
Dietitian and author Desiree Nielsen doesn’t want to tell you what you shouldn’t eat. Instead, she practices “positive nutrition” by advocating for “unrestricted eating” of all kinds of cool plants that should be making their way onto our plates. As she writes in Plant Magic, this approach works because our brains will fight back against restrictions—and because what we put into our bodies will have a greater impact on our health than what we don’t.
Nielsen shares her joy for getting more nutrient-dense plants into our diets, with some helpful insights. Chew on a few fennel seeds after dinner to ease digestion and freshen your breath, for example, or incorporate cumin for its anti-inflammatory and digestion-soothing properties. She leans hard into tahini, pairing it with tomatoes and dates; transforming it into a ranch dressing to coat a broccoli salad; or whipping it with sweet potato and harissa for a spicy dip.
If you’re new to plant-based cooking, you may need to add some new ingredients to your pantry, such as spelt flour or hemp hearts. But doing so will open up a new world of meat-free possibilities, and Nielsen promises they will taste good. “If it’s not delicious,” she writes, “what’s the point?”
—Tilde Herrera
Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden
By Teresa Peterson
In a busy world that seems so often to be filled with struggle, despair, and hate, Teresa Peterson shares a tale of love, wisdom, and reciprocity cultivated through the close observation and attentive following of her garden’s seasonality. Delicately weaving together poetry, prose, and recipes for dishes like Wild Rice, Roast, and Hominy for a Crowd and Zucchini Brownies, Peterson offers an easily devoured glimpse into mitakuye owasin—the Dakota way of living and being in deep relationship with our natural relatives: land, plants, and water.
Told through sections that follow the seasons, Peterson brings us along for everything from her struggle to reconcile Christianity with Dakota spirituality to tales of her great-great-grandmother’s eventual return to her homelands. We learn, too, of her encounters with outspoken red squirrels and conversations with university students enrolled in a course on sustainability leadership. It’s gardening as an act of love for Mother Earth that ties these seemingly disparate threads together. “The garden has always been a space for me to work through my own everyday problems or to reflect on issues too big for me to solve,” Peterson writes—a balm for the soul residing in an often-troubled world.
—Cinnamon Janzer
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
By Zoë Schlanger
Plants create the oxygen we breathe; they feed and shelter us and an infinity of other creatures; and they delight us in innumerable ways—with their beauty, their fragrance, the shade they provide. Obviously, they’re alive—but how alive, exactly? Over the past 20 years, aided by leaps in technology, botanists have uncovered plant behaviors that challenge our very idea of what a plant is.
For environmental journalist Zoë Schlanger, this was a story “too good to stay locked in the realms of academia.” She embarked on a years-long journey, interviewing scores of scientists all over the world and describing, in shimmering prose, their findings: Plants can communicate with one another—and even other species—by releasing chemicals into the air, or through a network of underground fungi. Some plants can recognize genetic kin, arranging their roots and leaves to hospitably share light and soil. They can hear sounds. Plants have recent memories that they pass on to their seeds. A few are able to shape-shift, mimicking the forms of other plants around them.
A rigorous thinker and gifted, expansive storyteller, Schlanger gives us the context to understand what we’re learning, interspersing details of plant physiology with sweeping overviews of how life evolved on Earth, the history of the scientific method, and the place of plants in Indigenous cultures. This stunning book upends our take-them-for-granted view of plants and encourages us to really see them—to our profound benefit.
—Margo True
Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora
By Khushbu Shah
This cookbook explores Indian immigrant foodways in America and invites readers to add these methods and ingredients to everyday cooking. Shah is the first person of color to serve as restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine, and her enthusiasm will send you straight to the kitchen. She starts by dismantling myths about all Indian food being spicy and overly complicated, then addresses assumptions about vegetarianism and briefly discusses caste and its relation to eating, giving reading references for a deeper dive.
Shah shows you how to stock your pantry and get rolling with simple basics, like Cabbage Nu Shaak, a quick stir-fry that her mother, a dentist, made multiple times a week—and that Shah still makes today, paired with Yogurt Rice, a simple stovetop pudding. Paneer and dal are the starring proteins in this mostly vegetarian cookbook that provides excellent meat alternatives—for instance, the Tandoori chicken wing marinade of yogurt and spices works great on cauliflower.
Using this book is fun, and with Shah’s curiosity as your guide, you’ll be looking at noodles and flour tortillas from a whole new perspective. Dive into cheeky pokes at stereotypes with a bingo board that names common objects of the diaspora and note maybe the best blurb ever—a goofy quip from the author’s father urging you to buy this book because his daughter didn’t become a doctor.
—Amy Halloran
Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer
By Cathy Stanton
Bringing in more grocery stores seems like a straightforward solution to serve communities that lack access to food—especially to diverse and fresh locally grown produce. But what seems like an obvious solution comes with deep-rooted problems that require much untangling. Scholar Cathy Stanton explores these complexities in Food Margins, a blend of history, ethnography, and memoir.
The book spotlights Quabbin Harvest, a food co-op in downtown Orange, Massachusetts, a former mill town that has seen better days. Ever since Quabbin launched in 2015, it has struggled to stay afloat, at one point on the brink of bankruptcy. Stanton’s book focuses on the co-op’s trials and tribulations as it wrestles with supply chain issues and maintaining its membership base. The book is at its best when Stanton writes about her personal involvement in the initiative; she eventually steps in to manage the business, working with the board, volunteers, and consultants. She packs in gripping stories of how she and fellow local-food supporters try to attract shoppers/members to Quabbin –launching a cooked food line, running fundraisers, creating a share-the-shelf program, downsizing freezers—and covering them with chalkboard signs reading, “We are re-imagining the store” when they couldn’t stock them with enough food. There is a touching story of Dean Cycon, the owner of Dean’s Beans, snapping up Quabbin memberships for all his staff and arranging a credit arrangement to help the co-op keep going.
Ultimately, Food Margins leaves the reader gripped with the question of whether Quabbin will survive and with a deep appreciation of what it takes to bring fresh food to the shelf.
—Amy Wu
Feeding a Divided America: Reflections of a Western Rancher in the Era of Climate Change
By Gilles Stockton
In this collection of interconnected essays, Gilles Stockton straddles two worlds: the bucolic grasslands of Montana, where he ranches cattle and sheep, and the polished halls of Congress, where he’s pushed for agricultural reform as a past president of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association. He ably bridges those perspectives here, exploring “the realities of production agriculture within the context of living in rural America.”
At his best, Stockton comes across like a latter-day Wendell Berry with an economics degree, connecting his unshakeable convictions in the value of rural community with detailed analysis of dysfunction in the livestock industry. While some sections can get wonky, Stockton also keeps his writing grounded in references to his real-world experience, like seeing huge tracts of nearby rangeland be bought up by absentee billionaires. “Is it wise for urban America to continue treating the rural parts of this country as a mere colony?” he asks.
Although Stockton admits that there are no easy answers, Feeding a Divided America advocates for diversified farming and rural respect as good places to start repairing a persistent cultural divide.
—Daniel Walton
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
By Nicola Twilley
While a cool drink and a good summer read may go hand in hand, Nicola Twilley’s new book, Frostbite, will have you thinking twice about taking that refreshing sip for granted. As the seasoned journalist and co-host of the podcast Gastropod reveals, the fridge that keeps beer frosty and sprigs of mint fresh is just the tip of the iceberg in the cold supply chain. Starting with refrigerated storage on the farm, the artificial cryosphere includes meat processing facilities, distribution centers, trucks and shipping containers, and supermarket display cases—a vast network designed to ensure safe, efficient, and convenient delivery of food into our iceboxes.
Through meticulous reporting—the result of a titanic, 17-year odyssey into the chilly depths of the refrigeration infrastructure, including a stint in the numbing cold of a freezer warehouse—Twilley unveils the history of cold storage and its evolution into the extensive and pervasive refrigerated food system we have today. But despite the technology’s promise to deliver food security and abundance, our seemingly insatiable appetite for manufactured cold comes at a shiver-inducing price, she discovers, with profound impacts on our health, socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape, and climate change.
—Naoki Nitta
The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them
By Karla T. Vasquez
As journalists, we understand the importance of documentation—the need to record moments in time to memorialize them in history. As food journalists, we understand even further that how people nurture themselves not only informs their personal identities, but culture as a whole. The SalviSoul Cookbook fully encapsulates food’s power to preserve all of this.
When author, food historian, and Salvadoran Karla Vasquez started researching Salvadoran cuisine 10 years ago at the Los Angeles Central Library, a librarian tried to help her find recordings of Salvadoran foodways. Coming up short, she quipped to Vasquez that if she wanted to find a book about Salvadoran cuisine, “You’re going to have to write it yourself.” And that’s exactly what Vasquez did.
In addition to recipes, the book contains 33 stories from Salvadoreñas that Vasquez sat down with to speak about their histories. The book makes readers feel like they’re learning to prepare traditional Salvadoran meals with love, while sitting at a table with phenomenal women who crossed borders carrying with them the recipes they used to feed their families. Known as the first exclusively Salvadoran cookbook from a major publisher in the United States, this cookbook creates space for more books that document overlooked foodways.
—Marisa Martinez
Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager
By Tama Matsuoka Wong
In the popular understanding, hunter-gatherer societies were replaced by those that adopted modern agricultural practices. In Into the Weeds, however, Tama Matsuoka Wong introduces readers to the anthropological concept of the “middle ground” between foraging and farming.
Many people around the world, she explains, have long both collected and tended to plants, and we can follow that example to create “wild gardens of the middle ground.” Into the Weeds unpacks this philosophy and acts as a guidebook for applying it to any backyard. Instead of clearing expanses of arable land, she says, we can plant gardens that build on the existing natural elements of a place, forage for wood sorrel on the edges of garden beds, and gather purslane that’s poking through cracks in cement.
Given Matsuoka Wong’s credentials as forager to renowned New York City restaurants, including Daniel and Atomix, one might imagine her approach to be entirely aspirational. While that’s partly true, the book is also filled with practical advice, like simple instructions for collecting and storing seeds and how to use chicken wire to protect crops from deer. Plus, the entire premise should help relieve the pressure traditional gardeners often feel to create neat, weed-free rows and maintain clearly delineated divisions between what we grow and what grows around us. “In the end, she writes, “nature slips through the boundaries and blurs them.” And that’s a good thing.
—Lisa Held
Other Notable Books
Planting With Purpose: How Farmers Create a Resilient Food Landscape
By Stephen Ellingson
Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan
By Matthew C. Halteman
A-Gong’s Table: Vegan Recipes from a Taiwanese Home
By George Lee
Farmer Eva’s Green Garden Life (a children’s book)
By Jacqueline Biggs Martin
Our Recent Books Coverage
Forage. Gather. Feast. 100+ Recipes from West Coast Forests, Shores, & Urban Spaces
By Maria Finn
One of this foraging cookbook’s goals is to inspire people to develop deeper relationships with their local ecosystems so they’ll be motivated to protect those places.
Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South
By Ayurella Horn-Muller
Journalist Horn-Muller detangles the South’s fickle relationship with the boundless kudzu vine, chronicling the way it has evolved over centuries and dissecting what climate change could mean for its future across the United States.
Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry
By Austin Frerick
In his new book, the Iowa native and competition expert exposes the system that has allowed seven families, including those behind Cargill, JBS, Driscoll’s, and Walmart, to build enormous power.
The Winter Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Year-Round Harvests
By Jean-Martin Fortier and Catherine Sylvestre
In his latest book, the Canadian market farmer and educator hopes to inspire a new generation of small-scale farmers to extend their growing seasons in an effort to boost food sovereignty.
The post Our Summer 2024 Food and Farming Book Guide appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>The post Getting Schooled on Preserving and Storing Food With Civic Kitchen appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>San Francisco’s Civic Kitchen buys enough fruits and vegetables every month to completely fill 10 shopping carts. More than 250 students take classes each month at the school, which is geared toward home cooks. In the last year, inflation has driven up Civic Kitchen’s food costs by 10 to 15 percent, says co-founder and instructor Jen Nurse.
“We’re super concerned with the longevity of what we bring in and don’t want to waste it, so we have all kinds of storage techniques,” Nurse says.
For example, the cooking school, like all professional kitchens, uses the first in, first out (FIFO) system so that the oldest food in its refrigerators, freezer, and pantry are used first.
Below are more food storage and preserving tricks and hacks from Civic Kitchen and 18 Reasons, a San Francisco nonprofit that promotes home cooking to increase food security.
Produce. For many types of fruits and vegetables, the key is to wash, dry, and store them in the refrigerator or pantry. After Civic Kitchen receives a produce order, for example, they fill a sink or large container with cool water and add most types of fruits and vegetables (see note below on berries) to soak before scrubbing everything—Nurse loves using Japanese tawashi brushes—and laying them out to dry completely on a wire rack or towel without touching. “If we do that and store in our pantry or fridge, it lasts a really long time and anything you reach for is already clean,” Nurse says.
Tomatoes and potatoes can be washed and dried but shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator. Potatoes can go into a brown paper bag once dry to shield them from light, which turns them green. Onions don’t need to be washed before storage or refrigeration. If your mushrooms are very dirty, wash them (quickly, to keep them from soaking up water) right before use.
Ethylene gas is released as produce ripens and can speed up ripening in nearby produce. Onions produce a lot of ethylene, so Kayla Whitehouse at 18 Reasons recommends storing them away from potatoes. Bananas also ripen quickly and produce ethylene, so store those away from apples.
Berries. For delicate berries such as strawberries or raspberries, Nurse spreads them out, unwashed, on a paper towel-lined sheet pan in a single layer, without touching. Then she layers another paper towel on top, followed by a layer of plastic wrap. Finally she stores them in the refrigerator to be washed right before using. For sturdier berries, such as blueberries and blackberries, she’ll follow the same procedure but washes and dries them first.
Herbs. Nurse advises against washing fresh herbs directly under hard running water, which can bruise the leaves. Instead, fill a large bowl or sink with cold water and float the herbs for a while. Lift them out and use a salad spinner to dry them as much as possible. For multiple kinds of herbs, nest a dry towel between the bunches in the salad spinner to keep from getting mixed up. Gather the stems in the same direction like a flower bouquet. Store the herbs upright in the refrigerator in a container with a little bit of water covering the stems. Or wrap the stems in a paper towel folded lengthwise, keeping the leaves loose, and store in an airtight container or Ziploc bag. “You throw a few bunches of herbs in there, squeeze out the air, zip it up, and it will last for at least two weeks,” Nurse says. This technique doesn’t work with basil, which should be washed right before using—and never refrigerated.
Herb storage (Photo courtesy of Civic Kitchen)
Ginger. Civic Kitchen stores half-used ginger in the freezer with the skin on. “You just grate it or use it straight from frozen, and it’s wonderful,” Nurse says. She notes that it’s easier to grate with the skin on and recommends choosing young ginger with fresh, fine skin and washing it before using.
Animal Protein. Most raw proteins last longer in the refrigerator than people think, Nurse says. She recommends buying and cooking fish within a couple days, and within three to four days for other types of protein. Throw out food if it smells off or looks discolored. Once cooked, most proteins will last three to five days.
Freshness. Nurse noted there can be a big difference in freshness and shelf life of what is available at a farmers’ market or farm stand vs. the grocery store. “I can say absolutely without a doubt that the produce and herbs from the farmers’ market typically last at least twice as long as what you get in the grocery store,” she said. Although some things may be cheaper at a grocery store, buying from a farmers’ market or farm stand also ensures that more of your dollars are going directly into farmers’ pockets.
Storage containers. Nurse recommends using clear, airtight containers that are stackable and nest well with each other, such as square- or rectangle-shaped containers rather than round ones. Although some people steer clear of plastic due to safety concerns, Nurse doesn’t have a problem with food-grade plastic containers like Cambro. She advises placing labels in the front of containers, rather than on top, so you can quickly see what needs to be used first.
Labeled foods in Civic Kitchen’s pantry (Photo courtesy of Civic Kitchen)
Freezing. If you can’t cook your food or eat your leftovers in a timely manner, “your freezer is your friend,” Nurse says. Whitehouse recommends blanching vegetables before freezing them to retain texture and flavor; she also recommends buying frozen vegetables to save money on out-of-season produce. Overripe bananas can be frozen with or without their skin and used in smoothies or banana bread.
If using Ziploc bags to store food in the freezer, Nurse says it’s important to squeeze out as much air as possible because many freezers are designed to cycle through freeze and thaw periods; as they cycle up and down in temperature, food will refreeze, which can lead to freezer burn if the food is exposed to air.
Preserving. Extra onions and other vegetables can be pickled with a quick brine, which will extend their life for a month and provide fun toppings for tacos and sandwiches. Onions can also be caramelized, which will keep for a week or be frozen. Lemons preserved in salt and sugar can add a kick to salad dressings, sauces, cocktails, and marinades. For herbs about to turn, Nurse recommends making a simple green sauce that can be added to meat, sandwiches, pasta, or dressing, or can be frozen for later use.
Avoid the danger zone. Nurse advises home cooks to beware of the danger zone, the 40° F to 140°F range in which bacteria can quickly grow. The saying goes, “Keep hot food hot, and cold food cold.” Food safety experts recommend discarding perishable food that has been held in this temperature range cumulatively for more than four hours.
Cooking Tips From the Civil Eats Team
Introduction by Lisa Held
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the Civil Eats’ team are enthusiastic home cooks. Some of us have been to culinary school, some have picked up favorite recipes from their parents, and others have found inspiration in the wide world of recipes and how-to videos now available online. Here, the team shares some of the best tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way. We’d love to hear your tips as well—send us an email!
When it comes to home cooking, we all pick up knowledge in different ways.
Part of my story involves marrying an award-winning chef. (I know, what a brag.) In almost all ways, it’s a dream. He cooks for me constantly, and for that, I am unceasingly grateful.
But for an enthusiastic home cook, it can also be complicated. I love to cook and always thought I was pretty good at it. But when we first got together, my “skills” suddenly seemed ridiculous. I was filled with anxiety chopping vegetables in his presence and terrified any time he took a bite of a dish I’d made. (To be clear, he is only ever supportive and uncritical; it’s just about my internal desire to measure up in all ways at all times.)
Over time, that fear was whittled away by love and partnership. And along the way, I got better at cooking. The best part is that the pure joy he gets from making and sharing something delicious rubbed off on me. While some people dread the question, his eyes light up when he asks (sometimes literally at 10 a.m.), “What do you want to have for dinner tonight?” But I also use more salt and pepper than I ever did before and know how to make many more simple condiments. (Try this: diced white onion, cilantro, lime juice.)
“One extra step.” If time is the only variable that matters, you can live without this. Especially because yes, there will be more dishes. But one thing I noticed is that chefs always add an extra step that happens before the main “cooking” event. I never would have bothered with it in the past, but I have realized it can really improve the outcome. For example, boiling hard vegetables like potatoes or broccoli that are going to end up sautéed, roasted, or fried. Or sweating eggplant: Cover slices or dices with plenty of salt, let it sit for 20 minutes, put it in a towel, and squeeze out the water. —Lisa Held
A final touch. I used to laugh at the idea of carefully plating or garnishing a weeknight dinner for two, but there is something so lovely about someone putting a plate in front of you that looks like it was made with care. The most simple bowl of rice and beans comes to life with a little cilantro garnish on top. —Lisa Held
Garlic oil at the ready. For years I have sautéed garlic in olive oil before using it in pesto or other sauces that don’t get cooked; it mellows out the flavor and significantly reduces my garlic-breath woes. For the last six months or so, I have been doing that “one extra step” that Lisa mentions and sautéing more garlic and oil than I immediately need, and keeping the extra in a jar on my counter. Being able to quickly add garlic oil to any dish makes it a little more magical, and it makes pesto that much quicker to whip up. —Matt Wheeland
Storage and presentation. Anything that’s getting stored in the fridge gets masking tape with an ID and a date. It takes two seconds, and I think it really does help you make sense of what’s in your fridge, which helps you come up with dinner plans more quickly and avoid food waste. —Lisa Held
Consult internet experts. When I want to figure out how to make something come out great, I go to YouTube to find tricks. I recently learned how to make fluffy omelets and how to pop the best popcorn every time! —Kalisha Bass
4 words to cook by. Samin Nosrat’s principle of “Salt Fat Acid Heat” is really helpful for figuring out how to cook and season to taste. It’s the idea that good-tasting food strikes a balance between salty, fatty, and acidic elements, while also considering how it is cooked (heat). So if the food doesn’t quite taste right, it’s likely one of those factors needs adjusting. —Grey Moran
Look to simple, veggie-forward recipes for inspiration. We got into a rut with menu ideas to prepare for two kids and with limited time. We found ourselves making pasta, tacos, or a plate of rice and roasted vegetables over and over, ad infinitum. While we’re not ones for prescriptive diets, we’ve recently found inspiration with Mediterranean diet-inspired recipes, which prioritize vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and heart-healthy fats. The new ideas have spiced up our rotation: spinach and feta frittata! Lemony roasted shrimp and asparagus! Tuna melts! The variety has been refreshing, and the kids have been happy. We look for recipes that are simple and require as few ingredients and steps as possible. —Christina Cooke
Simple, high-quality ingredients. The one tip I share the most is really the simplest: Buy the best ingredients you can afford and let them shine. Because I don’t eat meat, I often spend more on fresh vegetables at the farmers’ market as well as high-quality olive oil—and I use a lot of it. People often seem amazed how really good olive oil can transform vegetables, not only in cooking and roasting, but also as a finishing touch and in salad dressing. Caramelized baby cauliflower, fennel, spring onions, and carrots, for example, can be transformed into a simple delicacy with a peppery olive oil and salt. —Naomi Starkman
Cook with, and for, friends. The Civil Eats team is tired of me talking about my soup swap, but it’s one of my favorite cooking improvements in the last few years. Throughout the winter, a neighbor friend and I exchange a quart of soup every week. I’ll make a slightly larger pot of soup—which takes almost no extra effort—and I get an extra meal by swapping with my neighbor. It’s like two meals for one! Plus, I get to try a bunch of recipes that I never would’ve discovered on my own. —Matt Wheeland
For kids, find recipes that can be deconstructed. With two kids, ages 3 and 5, who each have particular tastes, we look for recipes that sound tasty to my husband and me—but can be served in deconstructed form as well. That way, we can enjoy the whole dish as intended, and they can enjoy the individual components they find most appealing. We recently prepared a variation of this farro, chickpea, spring veggie, and feta salad, for example. While we ate the marinated salad all mixed together, the kids enjoyed farro, roasted chickpeas, and slices of avocado, and could avoid the radishes and lettuce, which they were less likely to eat. —Christina Cooke
Finishing touches. Ice cube trays are great for freezing small portions of extra sauce; the cubes can be stored in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. For example, you can pull out a few cubes of stock, pesto, or chile sauce for a quick addition to a dish. We also typically have fresh herbs, citrus, and good olive oil and butter on hand for finishing a dish. —Tilde Herrera
Preserving family memories. The act of passing on a family recipe can often be forgotten or put off for years. Sometimes it’s best to be the initiator and ask to learn how to make your mom’s famous chimichurri or arroz con pollo. Not only will seeking guidance on how to prepare beloved dishes allow another generation to experience the love of cooking that spans decades, but it will also honor the cooks themselves. Take this as a sign to ask that family member about their iconic dish and then be sure to pass down the knowledge in your own time. —Marisa Martinez
All interviews in this issue have been edited for length and clarity
The post Getting Schooled on Preserving and Storing Food With Civic Kitchen appeared first on Civil Eats.
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