Eat, Stomp, Poop: Could Better Ranching Help Save the Planet?
Mother Jones illustration; Getty Rancher Loren Poncia counts roughly 500 glossy Angus beef cattle, 350 sheep, and 19 hogs among his brood at Stemple Creek ranch, a scenic stretch of sandy rolling hills dotted with bony Eucalyptus trees near the Pacific Ocean in Tomales, California. The animals have brought Poncia acclaim: Stemple Creek’s organic meats…
Bite Podcast’s New Series Explores How Climate Change Is Transforming Dinner
Mother Jones illustration; Getty Climate change has already started to unleash its fury, from megastorms to flooding to ravenous fires. But the way many people will first experience this phenomenon is in the quiet of their homes—at the dinner table. As Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger,…
This Ancient Fruit Holds Secrets for How to Farm in Climate Change
Heiko Wolfraum/dpa/AP Cloverleaf Farm, a small produce operation in Davis, California, managed to do okay during the extreme drought that lasted from 2012 to 2016. But in the first wet year after the long dry period, the farm lost its entire apricot crop to disease—$40,000 to $50,000 down the drain. Researchers predict that as climate…
Universal Free School Lunch Can End Cafeteria Shaming. But Now It’s Under Threat.
Kim Morris, head cook at Bella Vista School in Bella Vista, Ca, watches as students utilize the salad bar. Andreas Fuhrmann/The Record Searchlight/Associate Press A few weeks ago, I went back to school—literally, to the elementary school of my 1970s childhood in Austin, Texas. But I wasn’t (just) on a Proustian journey to recover the…
The Bizarre Trump-Fueled Backlash to Healthy School Lunches
Party of One Studio Back in 2010, then–first lady Michelle Obama launched a nefarious scheme to turn school cafeterias into liberal indoctrination zones. Or at least that’s how Obama’s right-wing opponents portrayed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a law she spearheaded that gave the National School Lunch Program its first nutritional update in more than…
This Apple Might Be the Most Anticipated Piece of Produce in History
Aysia Stieb/The California Sunday Magazine After two decades of research and development, it’s no wonder the Cosmic Crisp, a new variety of apple, is causing such a stir even before it hits supermarket shelves: There have been launch parties, press conferences, Instagram Influencers, and a $10.5 million marketing budget. On this week’s episode of Bite,…