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Welcome to Civil Eats, an award-winning news site dedicated to critical thinking about the American food system. At a time when political divisions and the climate crisis fan our fears and threaten our collaborative spirit, we offer fair, accurate, and accessible journalism that reveals how our food system works—and where it breaks down.
Our mission is to broaden and deepen the conversation around food and agriculture, amplify underrepresented voices, hold power–both government officials and corporations–to account, and inspire a more equitable, sustainable future.
If you’ve been with us since we started in 2009, you’re part of a community of changemakers and food innovators. We keep you front of mind as we’re identifying the challenges and solutions you need to stay at the forefront of food-system thought leadership.
Both through our reporting and through conversations with you, our readers, Civil Eats brings together diverse viewpoints that are essential to thoughtful, meaningful change.
Civil Eats brings a clear and compelling voice to the most important food and agriculture stories of our time: How climate change impacts our food system, the challenges many communities face in finding good, nutritious food, and the ways state and federal policies shape every bite we eat.
We dig deep to find solutions that center ecosystem health, human-scale farming, and previously overlooked communities, adding levels of context and detail that are rare on other sites and in other publications. We don't shy away from pursuing difficult or complicated stories.
By covering rural America, urban centers, Capitol Hill and beyond, and by delivering fair, balanced, high-quality journalism, Civil Eats breaks important news, educates leaders and policymakers, influences the national conversation, and serves as an invaluable resource for mainstream media. We pride ourselves on our reputation for nuanced and trusted reporting.
Although we focus on the U.S., we also occasionally cover American food policy and American corporate operations overseas. We do not report on international issues in the regular course of our journalism.
When Civil Eats launched in 2009, no major media outlets focused on the intersectionality of food and other significant social and political issues. For the past 15 years, we have led the charge in creating robust public discourse on food and farming and worked to make complicated, underreported stories more accessible to a mainstream audience.
In particular, we remain unparalleled in the media landscape for our commitment to reporting on food justice and Indigenous foodways, both of which we’ve covered since our inception in 2009. We routinely reveal the connection between race and environmental health. Our reporting centers BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities that are disproportionately and negatively impacted by the food and agriculture system, and we've broken new ground in our coverage of inequity in food access. We also strive to cultivate diverse contributors.
We are rigorous and fair in our assessment and analysis of current events, and seek to add new information and fresh perspectives. We are not in the business of breaking news, but are often the first to report on the people, places, and projects that deserve our attention. We approach our work with curiosity, thoroughness, and integrity, and we try to achieve equity both as a team and through our work.
As a digital-only newsroom, we have always worked remotely. Our team is based across the U.S., with headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are unique in our collaborative approach to identifying unreported issues, voices, and ideas, and work intensively with our reporters and freelancers to tell important stories that capture the complexity of the food system.
Civil Eats began as a website for Slow Food Nation, a San Francisco event in 2008 where 85,000 people converged at to focus on the politics and pleasures of eating. Leading up to the event, the website received close to 1 million visitors and became a touchstone for people interested in broadening the conversation about food politics.
Shortly thereafter, in January 2009, Civil Eats was co-founded by Paula Crossfield and Naomi Starkman as an independent site offering a range of high-level analysis and news stories—and to give voice to people who were actively changing the food system.
For our first four years, Civil Eats operated with no funding and as a labor of love. We were fiscally sponsored thereafter, and in 2020, became an independent 501-C-3 public charity. We continue to raise funding from individual donors, foundations, and through our membership program.
The team operates a virtual newsroom on a shoestring budget, with little to no overhead. As a pioneer in this space, we have never accepted advertising and remain deeply committed to editorial independence, providing our writers and commentators autonomy.
In our 15 years, Civil Eats has achieved significant impact and reach:
• 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 was 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;
• We were nominated for a James Beard Award for our 2023 investigative series on Walmart and the Walton Family; and
• We were nominated for best micro newsroom by the Online News Association twice, in 2023 and 2024.
Read about our many other awards and honors.
In 2015, we put up a paywall like many independent nonprofit news organizations have done—as a way to raise funds to support our operations. Readers could access a small number of articles for free, and if they wanted to get past the paywall, they paid a fee to become a Civil Eats member. Our members care about independent food systems news, and the membership program has been critical in supporting our work as a small, nonprofit newsroom.
In 2024, we dropped our paywall and launched a campaign to make our award-winning reporting available to everyone.
Learn more about our paywall here—and become a member to support our work.
We practice standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN). Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a strict firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of revenue, and accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services, or opinions.
We avoid conflicts of interest—real or perceived—by refusing special treatment and favors, and by refraining from political involvement. We also avoid investing in any companies we cover. When conflicts are unavoidable, we disclose them. We accept gifts, grants, and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but we make our news judgments independently and not on the basis of donor support.
We may consider accepting donations to support coverage of particular topics, but we keep editorial control of that coverage. We don’t give donors the right to review or influence editorial content, or to distribute it without our authorization.
We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization, including financial support from our donors. Accepting donor support does not mean we endorse them or their products, services, or opinions. We accept gifts, grants, and sponsorships from individuals, organizations, and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics, and special projects. We make our news judgments independently—not based on or influenced by donors. We don’t give supporters the rights to assign, review, or edit content.
Even when applying these criteria, cases may arise in which accepting a gift, grant, or some other form of support might compromise our mission or goals, or might create the appearance of such a compromise. Accordingly, Civil Eats reserves the right to decline or to return any gift, grant, or other form of support if we determine that it would not be in our best interest to accept or to continue to receive such support.
Gifts of tangible real property, personal property, securities, cryptocurrency, bequests, in-kind donations, or other such types of donations of $200,000 or more may only be accepted upon approval of the board of directors. We make public all donors who give $5,000 or more per year.
We prefer not to accept donations from anonymous sources, but will, for general support, only if we’re sure that we are spending the donation according to our own intent and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards. We do not accept donations from sources who, deemed by our board of directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.
This Privacy Policy describes the policies of
Civil Eats, 502 E. Cotati Ave. #7014, California 94931, United States of America (the), email: info@civileats.com, phone: 623.259.8416
On the collection, use, and disclosure of your information that we collect when you use our website. (the “Service”). By accessing or using the Service, you are consenting to the collection, use and disclosure of your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to the same, please do not access or use the Service.
We may modify this Privacy Policy at any time without any prior notice to you and will post the revised Privacy Policy on the Service. The revised Policy will be effective 180 days from when the revised Policy is posted in the Service and your continued access or use of the Service after such time will constitute your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy. We therefore recommend that you periodically review this page.
We will collect and process the following personal information about you:
We collect/receive information about you in the following manner:
We will use the information that we collect about you for the following purposes:
If we want to use your information for any other purpose, we will ask you for consent and will use your information only on receiving your consent and then, only for the purpose(s) for which grant consent unless we are required to do otherwise by law.
We will not transfer your personal information to any third party without seeking your consent, except in limited circumstances as described below:
We require such third party’s to use the personal information we transfer to them only for the purpose for which it was transferred and not to retain it for longer than is required for fulfilling the said purpose.
We may also disclose your personal information for the following:
If the Service or our company is merged or acquired with another company, your information will be one of the assets that is transferred to the new owner.
We will retain your personal information with us for 90 days to 2 years after users terminate their accounts or for as long as we need it to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected as detailed in this Privacy Policy. We may need to retain certain information for longer periods such as record-keeping / reporting in accordance with applicable law or for other legitimate reasons like enforcement of legal rights, fraud prevention, etc. Residual anonymous information and aggregate information, neither of which identifies you (directly or indirectly), may be stored indefinitely.
Depending on the law that applies, you may have a right to access and rectify or erase your personal data or receive a copy of your personal data, restrict or object to the active processing of your data, ask us to share (port) your personal information to another entity, withdraw any consent you provided to us to process your data, a right to lodge a complaint with a statutory authority and such other rights as may be relevant under applicable laws. To exercise these rights, you can write to us at info~at~civileats.com. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable law.
You may opt-out of direct marketing communications or the profiling we carry out for marketing purposes by writing to us at info~at~civileats.com.
Do note that if you do not allow us to collect or process the required personal information or withdraw the consent to process the same for the required purposes, you may not be able to access or use the services for which your information was sought.
To learn more about how we use these and your choices in relation to these tracking technologies, please refer to our Cookie Policy.
The security of your information is important to us and we will use reasonable security measures to prevent the loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration of your information under our control. However, given the inherent risks, we cannot guarantee absolute security and consequently, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk.
If you have any queries or concerns about the processing of your information that is available with us, you may email our Grievance Officer at Civil Eats, 502 E. Cotati Ave. #7014, email: info~at~civileats.com. We will address your concerns in accordance with applicable law.
Last Updated On May 23, 2025
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Last Updated: May 23, 2025