This Is Your Farm on Forever Chemicals
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, author Mariah Blake and former organic farmer Adam Nordell tell the dark tale of how the highly toxic, long-lived class of chemicals called PFAS made their way from government labs to corporate factories to a farm near you—and the happier story of how ordinary people are organizing to minimize the harm from this mess.
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The Dish on MAHA and Food
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich and Theodore Ross of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, co-hosts of Forked podcast, tease out the contradictions and paradoxes of food policy in the age of Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Soil Microbes Matter
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, Leo Horrigan tells us about his new book and all the ways we could use microbes to regenerate healthy soil, sink carbon, and grow more nutritious crops.
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Landing Young People
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, Michelle Hughes despairs over federal funding freezes for land- access programs and rebounds with an optimistic vision for the long-term future in which young farmers regenerate not only soil, but the industry as a whole.
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Land's End
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, author Michael Grunwald and host Tom Philpott grapple with the future of food in a warming world.
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Black to the Land
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, author Brea Baker teases out the 20th century’s great dispossession of Black farmers, and reports on a budding revival of African-American agrarianism.
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The Land Owns Us
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, James Skeet waxes philosophical on European-style, settler-oriented, colonialism-informed agriculture and re-imagines an agricultural practice that relies instead on indigenous regenerative intelligence.
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Monopoly Money: On the Iowa Hog Barons Behind Your Bacon
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, author Austin Frerick discusses the barons who dominate US food production, including an Iowa farm couple who spun enormous, manure-spewing hog operations into a vast fortune.
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Confused by Nutrition Research? Blame Big Food
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, Marion Nestle reveals the food industry's recipe for cooking up academic nutrition research that serves its interests—not yours.
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Is Animal Agriculture Contributing to Bird Flu Spread?
Unconfined
In this episode of Unconfined, two leading experts, Meghan Davis and Erin Sorrell, take us from farming communities to policy circles to explain how bird flu spreads, who is at risk, and what we can do to slow this outbreak.
info_outlineUpton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed inhumane working conditions in the meatpacking industry, as well as disgusting details about the meat itself. Decades later, conditions and wages improved for meatpackers. Meatpacking became a proper middle-class job, alongside jobs in the automotive industry. But during the 1980s—the Reagan Era—union-busting reversed the trend. Workers in the meat industry, many of whom were unempowered immigrants, once again faced safety concerns and falling wages. They were bumped out of the middle class and back into The Jungle. In this Unconfined three-part series, CLF staffers Tom Philpott and Christine Grillo interview activists and journalists who are investigating the lack of protections for workers and doing something about it.