Civil Eats

Nessa Richman noticed a mother next to her feeding her young son breakfast: a bag of Fritos and a Pepsi.

She and a neighbor drove through the streets in a camera-equipped Rivian, monitoring immigration enforcement while her partner wrangled food distribution for families in hiding.

Farmers fear precision agriculture tools that promise to ‘empower’ them with AI-driven insights.

For the last five years, Michelle Coleman has attended cooking and culinary education classes in a light-filled teaching kitchen at her local library in Boston. The kitchen, designed for hands-on cooking and demonstrations with four gas cooktops and a 17-foot-long counter, was included in the building’s redesign in 2020 in …

There is no justice for the families of massacred banana workers in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Their deaths are only remembered by the massacre’s sole survivor, José Arcadio Segundo, who spends the rest of his life trying to convince others in his town of what he …

U.C. Santa Barbara researcher Nivedita Biyani believes solutions start with the right data. A new tool uses machine learning to estimate how different policy interventions can reduce plastic pollution through 2050.

Florida is one of a growing number of states threatening to use E-Verify as a way to intimidate and control farmworkers. As farmers face worker shortages and farm communities lose residents, are GOP lawmakers shooting themselves in the foot?

Farmworkers are laboring in the dark more often due to climate change. Experts say more data, and more protections against new risks are needed.

The Federal Crop Insurance Program helps steer the direction of U.S. agriculture. But advocates and farmers say its policies have often failed to benefit the most climate-adaptive farms—and penalizes farmers for adopting some climate-friendly strategies.

Host Celeste Headlee wants the public to understand how decades-old subsidies for sugar companies benefit billionaires at the expense of the environment, farmworkers, and the nutrition of the nation.

This spring, the pandemic-era increases to benefits offered through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ended in most states, substantially reducing the monthly dollar amounts many food-insecure households receive to buy food. Together with inflated food costs, the end of the emergency allotments—and revised work requir...

The majority of migrant farmworkers live below the federal poverty line, without easy access to healthy foods or affordable housing. To survive, many in this tight-knit community have found strategies for mutual aid and collaborative resilience.

Although Vasquez handled food every day for work, she couldn’t afford to buy groceries. Instead, she began exchanging food with friends and learning about Immokalee’s community-based resources through word of mouth.Immokalee is known as the tomato capital of the United States, yet 28 percent of the town’s 24,500 residents—the majority …

Adding oats to a farm’s rotation can improve soil health and reduce fossil fuels, but the crop has all but disappeared in the U.S. Now, a nascent movement fueled by oat milk’s popularity may help reverse the trend.

Amid lawsuits filed by thousands of farmers linking the herbicide to Parkinson’s disease, the EPA is reconsidering its analysis of paraquat’s risks.

Baldemar Velasquez has presided over the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the nation’s second-largest farmworker union, for its entire 55-year history. This year, he faced a challenger in a contested election for the first time. Chaos ensued.

The worker-owned, Black-led food cooperative quickly shifted their operation to provide emergency food during the height of the pandemic.

Only a third of factory farms have permits to discharge waste into water, soil, and air. A new legal effort from environmental groups seeks enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

The cost of specialized farm equipment is one of the biggest barriers for small-scale and beginning farmers. Cooperatives are springing up around the nation to help bridge the gap.

“I’ve often said, ‘You bulldoze a community garden, you bulldoze a community,’” said Raymond Figueroa, Jr., a Bronx-based community organizer.

Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers.Melton also says she witnessed discrimination on the job—not only from customers but also from the store’s management. As a young, lighter-skinned Black …

The pandemic-fueled land rush has brought wealthier buyers to rural areas, making land even harder to access—a crisis that has become especially acute in the Northeast.

We read, reviewed, and recommend more than 40 food and farming books for your gift-giving pleasure.

In the face of climate change and persistent droughts, a growing number of people from Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico and elsewhere are adopting the traditional farming practice.

Only a third of factory farms have permits to discharge waste into water, soil, and air. A new legal effort from environmental groups seeks enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

As the Colorado River drops to new lows, the future of the water-intensive cattle feed crop in the state—and the dairy industry it makes possible—are in question.

A majority migrant and undocumented workforce, farmworkers are especially vulnerable to extreme heat, not only because of their direct exposure, but also because of a lack of other social and labor protections.

Also in this week’s Field Report, a deeper look at the global fertilizer cartel, and the political battle over SNAP continues.