Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
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As food series ends, the story is just beginning
During my trip to the Midwest this summer, I saw many unsettling sights: vast monocropped landscapes lashed regularly with chemicals, insidious low-slung buildings that imprison thousands of animals and concentrate their waste. Yet I returned oddly invigorated, buzzing about Iowa’s promise as a sustainable-ag mecca. Amid the cornfields and the CAFOs, I saw thriving homestead […]
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While industrial agriculture fouls the Mississippi, the EPA cowers in the corner
Industrial agriculture thrives on its ability to skulk away from — or, to use economist’s argot, "externalize" — the costs of its considerable ecological messes. Often, it does so with the tacit approval of the federal government, in direct violation of federal law. In Iowa, for example, the state’s 2,100 CAFOs (confined-animal feedlot operations) regularly […]
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A wonderful dinner celebrating Fergus Henderson at Manhattan’s Savoy
Fergus Henderson Photo: Savoy. To certain vegans — the sort who recently saw fit to flay a chef who supports small farmers in the middle of Iowa (see comments below Kurt Michael Friese’s wonderful piece in Grist) — Fergus Henderson will be an object of derision. Feeling "a little dented”? Henderson would prescribe a bit […]
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A conversation with Michael Pollan
In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz’s definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn’t engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don’t obsess and […]
