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A changing climate means a changing diet.
Every year, one-third of all the food produced on the planet is lost or wasted, an amount valued at about one trillion dollars. If just 25 percent of that waste could be avoided, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people. Expiration dates that have no meaning to food safety, a reluctance to sell fruits and vegetables with cosmetic blemishes, and retail over-stoc...
Population growth, shifting agricultural practices, and altered weather patterns are weighing on the food supply, a pressure that will only intensify over the next 30 years, when the planet holds an estimated 10 billion inhabitants. Rising temperatures will reduce crop yield and spawn more pests, higher carbon dioxide levels will lessen the nutritional value of food, and f...
If you want to make an omelet, you’ve got to deal with a broken food system—one that is a massive contributor to climate change, that leaves populations hungry or full of non-nutritious calories, and that exploits land, labor, and species. Award-winning food writer Mark Bittman has a plan to provide affordable, nutritionally and environmentally sound food for everyone, cre...
With crop production increasingly threatened by unpredictable weather and a world population expected to grow 30 percent by midcentury, how are we going to feed everyone? The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and solutions you’ve probably never heard of are already in play. One company is tackling problems around industrial agriculture by growing cell-based me...
Almost 110 billion pounds of food, roughly 40% of the nation’s total food supply, go to waste in the United States every year, yet more than 38 million Americans lack reliable access to affordable, nutritious meals. Can we create a win-win-win that bridges the gap between waste and hunger while supporting struggling local restaurants that are often community mainstays? Ret...
Sustainability is the green buzzword of the decade, especially in the context of feeding a growing population while preserving the environment for the next generations. Unfortunately, the debate over how to address the global food challenge has set conventional agriculture and global commerce against local food systems and organic farms. This panel will explore what it mea...
Two US Department of Agriculture Secretaries, one past, one present, come together to talk about American food policies. Agricultural supports and other decisions made on US soil, and the trade agreements we negotiate around the world, have powerful effects on the global food supply; land conservation; the use of water, nitrogen, and pesticides; and animal and plant diseas...
Federal funds could not be used to pay for sugar-sweetened beverages under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called food stamps), if recommendations from the Bipartisan Policy Center are adopted. In its 2018 report, Leading with Nutrition, the center calls for restrictions and incentives that would recast SNAP as a tool for healthy eating. Other...
Alaina Wood, aka "The Garbage Queen" on TikTok, shares the importance of imperfect sustainability and her advice for dealing with climate doom.
The way we produce food is getting a lot of attention these days, and for good reason. If current projections hold, we’ll have 9 billion mouths to feed by 2050 – 2 billion more than we have today. Our need to eat already poses serious risks to the natural systems that sustain us. Can we meet future needs without further degrading our environment?
Anyone who has ever had a pet understands how deeply connected human beings are to the animals who serve as our companions, lessen our stress, and perhaps offer a buffer against cognitive decline. Puppy play date, anyone? Honeybees help to protect our food supply, vision-impaired people rely not only on seeing-eye dogs but also on seeing-eye horses, and animal research has...
We don’t always know how to express it, but many of us feel it: There’s something wrong with America today. The mood is tense. More Americans say they won’t have children because of climate change and other future catastrophes. But are things really as bad as they seem? Is decline something we need to accept—or is there a case for a new optimism?
Unpredictable weather is threatening crop production and a swelling population is increasing the demand for food.
Civilization was a byproduct of humanity’s need to feed ourselves, but we still haven’t figured it out. World population continues to grow even as developing economies demand more resource-intensive food. And though we face the prospect of long-term crop-antagonistic weather, we still throw away a tremendous amount of food. Take a look at the challenges of today — and the...
Heat waves. Wildfires. Floods. This summer has served up some of the most extreme weather on record, and it’s clear many of us are overwhelmed by climate change news. We usually hear more about problems than solutions, and it’s often difficult to find helpful information about managing our fear and discomfort. Alaina Wood is a scientist and climate communicator, known for...
Heat waves. Wildfires. Floods. This summer has served up some of the most extreme weather on record, and it’s clear many of us are overwhelmed by climate change news. We usually hear more about problems than solutions, and it’s often difficult to find helpful information about managing our fear and discomfort. Alaina Wood is a scientist and climate communicator, known for...
Food — delicious, nutritious, and plentiful — is essential to life. But the way we’re producing and consuming it is anything but friendly to life on the planet, and we need a new plan. In this pair of conversations, celebrity chef Daniel Humm shares his vision for transitioning the famed Eleven Madison Park to a vegan restaurant, and two innovators present new technology t...