Tom Philpott

Tom Philpott is a co-founder of Maverick Farms, a North Carolina–based sustainable farm and food education center. Philpott’s writing on the politics of food has appeared in the Guardian, Newsweek, and other publications. A former columnist and editor at Grist, he now writes the “Food for Thought” blog for Mother Jones.

Society

Review: The Meat Racket

If the meat industry’s slaughter practices seem brutal to you, check out the economics.

April 29, 2014

Society

How to be ‘Fast, Fresh, and Green’ in the kitchen [book review]

Like recycling, listening to NPR, and caring about the World Cup, everyday cooking has become a de rigeur activity for those with certain class and cultural aspirations. And that’s as it should be. We need more home cooks. If diversified, human-scale, community-directed farms are going to thrive, then a much broader swath of the population has to know how to turn raw ingredients into dinner — and do it regularly.

June 17, 2010

Society

Urban farms don’t make money – so what?

Over on Earth Island Journal, Sena Christian has an excellent, rigorously reported article about the tough economics of urban farming. She focuses on some of the more famous city farms of the Bay Area, where EIJ is based — City Slicker Farms, People’s Grocery — but she also discusses projects like Milwaukee’s Growing Power. And she finishes the piece with a farm I’d never heard of before: Greensgrow, in Philadelphia.

June 4, 2010

Society

Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay

Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one of the most interesting social movements to emerge in the last few years.” People have been talking about the “food movement” for a while, but I don’t think anyone has articulated its existence so clearly and in such an important publication.

June 2, 2010

Society

BBC on the impact of biofuels on Paraguay’s ecology and farmers

Everyone should listen to this BBC report on the “price of biofuels.” It digs into a key question: what does Europe’s appetite for biodiesel mean for people and ecosystems in the countries that produce the feedstocks?

April 29, 2010

Society

Haiti, U.S. ag policy reform, and Bill Clinton

What have Haiti’s recent calamities taught U.S. decision makers about foreign policy with regard to agriculture? Haiti imports nearly half of the food consumed there–and 80 percent of its rice, the national staple. In the past two years, the country has undergone two major shocks: the global spike in food commodity prices in 2008, and this year’s devastating earthquake. In both cases, the dearth of domestic food production, combined with the complete absence of rice reserves, translated to widespread hunger and misery.

April 8, 2010

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