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…
The Answer to Climate-Killing Cow Farts May Come From the Sea
Cristina Byvik One day in January 2014, police rushed to a farm in Rasdorf, Germany, after flames burst from a barn. They soon discovered that static electricity had caused entrapped methane from the flatulence and manure of 90 dairy cows to explode. Headline writers had a field day. But the incident pointed to a serious…
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…
That Viral Study About Red Meat Left Out The Most Important Part
gilaxia/iStock/Getty Americans consume, on average, more than a half a pound of meat per day—more than our counterparts in any other country. Should we eat less? A panel of 14 researchers from seven countries—all of whom claim to receive no meat-industry funding—just produced a study finding no compelling reason to cut back. There’s a catch,…
It’s Not Kale, It’s You
Y’all stop hating on kale.Rawpixel/iStock/Getty Remember the kale craze? Well, according to Amanda Mull over at the Atlantic, it’s over. And what’s more, Americans pretty much always hated the thick-leaved green, even way back in the mid-2015s, when it was common to see bearded men out and about in “Eat More Kale” t-shirts. Mull notes that Google…