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food

The Humble Cabbage Connects History and Cultures

David Bacon Civil Eats
Workers packing cabbage heads coordinate with each other to work quickly Photographer David Bacon shares stunning images of farmworkers harvesting cabbage the old-fashioned way, and writes that the ubiquitous if undervalued vegetable is actually a shared cultural touchstone.

How Rice Farming May Have Spread Across the Ancient World

Lizzie Wade Science
Hunter-gatherers didn’t learn farming themselves, or from their immediate neighbors, but rather from distant people moving into their territory—a pattern that may have played out throughout this part of the globe.

Twinkies, Carrots, and Farm Policy Reality

John Ikerd Civil Eats
An agricultural economist writes that treating Twinkies and carrots as the beginning and end of the farm subsidies discussion distracts from useful public discourse.

food

4-H: Indoctrination Nation

Sarah McColl Modern Farmer
The nonprofit National 4-H Council accepts donations from a veritable who’s who of Big Ag: Monsanto, ConAgra, DuPont, and Altria each gave at least a million dollars in 2015. A lot of cultural norms around gender and sexuality are directly illustrated by the history of 4-H.

Your Farm Is Trying to Kill You

Ian Kullgren Politico
Far from a bucolic idyll, farming in America is one of its most dangerous professions. And almost no one is trying to change that.

food

Spring Training for the Next Wave of Food Activists

Brian Massey Civil Eats
The food activist group, Eco Practicum, came together for five days in New York City for the third annual program produced in partnership with Our Name Is Farm, a training aimed at building “effective advocacy for a better food system.”

food

A WRITER'S PLEA TO SAVE THE FOODS WE LOVE

Keith Pandolfi Serious Eats
Simran Sethi's book, "Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love," is a call to arms: a warning of the dire consequences of what she sees as a disturbing lack of diversity in the foods we eat.

These Things Can Change

David Bacon & Rosario Ventura; Photos by David Bacon Dolars & Sense, March/April 2015 issue
Hiring migrant farm labor is very profitable for big agribusiness. Last year workers walked out of the fields at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Washington - one of the largest berry growers in the state. Berries are big business, with annual sales of $6.1 million, and big corporate customers like Häagen Dazs ice cream. Here is their story.

Immigrant America: The Worst Job In New York

Milking cows is a dirty, monotonous job, and as we found out in our latest episode of Immigrant America, it's not a job many unemployed Americans are willing to do. But the government doesn't give dairy farms a way to recruit foreign workers legally. We went to upstate New York to try to understand the cat and mouse game between dairy farms and immigration authorities. 

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