|
|
Our independent, investigative journalism about the U.S. food system is supported by members and donors like you.
|
|
Become a Member for $6/mo.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tom Huang is assistant managing editor for journalism initiatives at The Dallas Morning News, where he is leading a fundraising campaign to support local news and community engagement. As an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter
Institute, he organizes and teaches seminars for
|
|
|
professional journalists on writing, reporting and editing, and coaches the Local News Innovation Program, which helps newsrooms make the transition to sustainable digital publishing. As an
editor with the American Press Institute’s Better News site, he helps newsrooms present their best practices in digital transformation. In 2013, he was a Sulzberger fellow at Columbia University, where he studied executive leadership and journalism innovation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Immigrant Workers Are the Backbone of Our Food System
|
BY THE CIVIL EATS EDITORS • October 2, 2024
|
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. Read our coverage.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Good Goats Make Good Neighbors
|
BY CARMEN KOHLRUSS • October 2, 2024
|
On a sunny California day, Ricky Bobby the goat chomps across a hillside with the speed and pizazz of his NASCAR driver namesake from Talladega Nights.
Along with his fellow herd members, all employed by the nonprofit Happy Goat to reduce wildfire risks, Ricky Bobby is doing what he does best, gobbling up weeds, shrubs, and leaves from low-hanging branches. No plant appears to be too much of a challenge, including poison oak and spiky live-oak leaves. He and 100 caprine teammates can
clear about an acre a day.
“I really think that this is a hope of the future—organizations like them who really care about the environment, who care about the welfare of the Earth, who care about the climate and the quality of life for people,” says Carole Beckham, who hired Happy Goat to graze a portion of her 23-acre residential property in the Sierra Nevada. “With all the big fires we’ve had over the last several years, it’s really impacted the quality of life for a lot of people. It seems like Mariposa County has been in PTSD every year.”
Founded in 2020, Happy Goat farm sits on a 2,000-acre property in Mariposa County, near Yosemite National Park. The organization’s Goats for Good program leases out its grazing herd to nearby landowners in the Sierra Nevada at a reduced price, and hopes to make the service free of charge for some residents via a lottery. The farm also teaches local students about agriculture and
conservation—and donates much of the fruits and vegetables it grows to people in need. Read the full story.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Case for Seafood Self-Reliance
|
BY BEN SEAL • October 1, 2024
|
Scan the seafood case at your local grocery store and you’re likely to see the same staples, no matter where you are: shrimp, salmon, tuna, tilapia, cod. Most of it crossed international borders to reach you.
The U.S. is the world’s second-largest seafood importer, despite the fact that U.S. fishers catch 8 billion pounds of seafood each year. Much of the fish landed here is eaten elsewhere. That conundrum makes it harder for American fishermen to sustain their operations and forces fish to
be shipped thousands of miles before it reaches the dinner table. Climate change and global crises disrupting the international market only add to the complications.
Fisheries would be healthier and more sustainable if fish caught locally were consumed locally. But the discrepancy is by design, says Joshua Stoll, associate professor at the University of Maine and founder of Local Catch Network, a hub of seafood harvesters, businesses, researchers, and organizers that supports the growth of community-based seafood.
Civil Eats spoke with Stoll about seafood self-reliance, where community-supported fisheries fit into the conversation, and how climate change is making these issues all the more urgent. Read the full story.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Weathering Climate Shocks: How Restaurants Survive Supply Disruptions
|
BY HANNAH WALLACE • September 30, 2024
|
When Peter Platt was in Newport, Oregon, in 2018, visiting Local Ocean Seafoods to bring them on as a supplier, he spoke with some of the fishermen docked outside the waterfront fish market and restaurant. “All the salmon fishermen were like, ‘We don’t even bother to fish off the coast here anymore. Everyone heads to Alaska,’” says Platt, founder and owner of Portland’s high-end Peruvian restaurant Andina. “‘There’s just no fish.’” The dearth of Pacific salmon, he learned, was partly due to warming waters in salmon streams and drought-fueled water shortages, which are lethal to salmon eggs and juvenile fish. Platt, who is in charge of sustainability initiatives at Andina, did the only thing he could: He and his staff took salmon off Andina’s menu.
With all the challenges restaurants have faced in the past five years—COVID, inflation, price gouging—the impact of climate change on their supply chains has often been overlooked. Yet global warming is steadily affecting fisheries and farms around the world and the foods they yield.
Here in the U.S., extreme climate-related events like forest fires, floods, and drought ruin crops and harm aquatic life. They also cause power outages and disrupt transportation and distribution, which increases the price of all goods, including food.
For many restaurant owners and chefs, the impact is a real, daily challenge, causing a shortage of quality ingredients and sudden fluctuations in price. All of
this makes it harder to keep menu prices consistent and run a profitable business. “There’s a lot of topsy-turviness right now,” Platt says. Read the full story.
This is the second article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater.
|
|
|
|
|
