April 4, 2013:Raising pigs crammed into metal pens and dosed with antibiotics nearly killed Russ Kremer. Now he preaches a better way. Chipotle, for one, is a believer.
May 16, 2012:A little over a year ago, Lucas Benitez, Greg Asbed, and I committed an act that would surely have gotten us arrested if we had attempted it six months earlier. Traveling in a tired and faded Toyota sedan, we cruised through... read more >
March 26, 2012:You almost certainly have BPA in your bloodstream -- nine out of ten Americans do, according to government tests. It’s also in some of the places most likely to affect the most vulnerable among us: studies have found BPA in... read more >
March 23, 2012:Good riddance to one of the most toxic chemicals in conventional agriculture’s arsenal. Battered by environmentalists and farmworkers and entangled in a lawsuit, Arysta LifeScience, the Japanese company that sells the... read more >
February 23, 2012:Unlike most of my neighbors in the Boston suburb where I once lived, I never used the services of one of those lawn-care companies that come around with tank trucks to spray customers’ yards. I was philosophically opposed to... read more >
January 31, 2012:Advocates for genetically modified crops have never relied on logic to advance their cause. And the same holds true for the government officials who give their blessings to new bioengineered plants. Just look at what has... read more >
January 10, 2012:Back in the 1970s, I spent a summer as a mate on a lobster boat off Nova Scotia. With cold weather, choppy seas, and the physical drudgery of heaving around traps, the job entailed many less-than-pleasant duties, but my... read more >
December 16, 2011:Several years ago, I spent a few days on a boat with a University of Florida sea turtle research team off the Azorean island of Faial. Using a long-handled dip net, the biologists scooped juvenile loggerheads out of the... read more >
November 29, 2011:Are the embattled populations of Atlantic cod collapsing or making a comeback? The answer varies according to whom you ask, and when you ask them. Fishermen and fisheries officials were taken aback earlier this month by an... read more >
Barry Estabrook is a two-time winner of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Awards for food writing. His first, for a Gourmet feature about labor abuses in Florida’s tomato fields, led to his acclaimed book...Barry Estabrook is a two-time winner of the prestigious James Beard Foundation Awards for food writing. His first, for a Gourmet feature about labor abuses in Florida’s tomato fields, led to his acclaimed book Tomatoland about how industrial agriculture has ruined one of America's favorite foods. His blog Politics of the Plate earned Barry his second Beard award in 2011. He lives on a 30-acre tract in Vermont where he gardens, tends hens, taps maple trees, and brews hard cider from his own apples. (Photo: Trent Campbell)MoreClose