“All Things Considered,” NPR • Nov. 14, 2013
Food labels have become battlegrounds. Just last week, voters in Washington state narrowly defeated a measure that would have required food manufacturers to reveal whether their products contain genetically modified ingredients. Continue reading “What’s The Most Important Thing Food Labels Should Tell Us?”
Civil Eats • Oct. 7, 2013
In 2004, Seth Holmes, a young American physician and anthropologist, undertook a trip that few take for kicks: He migrated from the rural highlands of Oaxaca in southern Mexico to the deserts of Arizona alongside a band of indigenous migrants bound for American farm fields. Continue reading “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: The Human Cost of American Agriculture”
Here’s what I”m thinking on my way to the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards tonight, where The American Way of Eating—as well as a feature I wrote on farm labor contracting for The American Prospect—is up for an award:: Continue reading “James Beard Awards: A deep if problematic honor”
A lovely nod this weekend from the New Yorker’s Daniel Fromson, via his recommended readings:
Theft is also a major theme in “As Common As Dirt,” from last September’s American Prospect, a narrative that is worth revisiting in light of its nomination for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award on Monday. Tracie McMillan, author of the well-received “The American Way of Eating”—a “Nickel and Dimed”-esque account of toiling in a Walmart produce department, an Applebee’s, and the fields of California—returns to the last of these places and introduces readers to the seventy-five-year-old Ignacio Villalobos, who is lovingly sketched down to the plastic bags with which he lines his leaky boots. But it’s McMillan’s willingness to dig into a little-discussed corner of agribusiness, and the straight-talking tone with which she lays out the facts, that makes the piece stand out. The article is about farm-labor contractors, who “give American produce growers what companies like China’s Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business”—often at the expense of workers like Mr. Villalobos, who are routinely paid less than what they’ve been promised.
Read more:
I’m traveling for my fellowship (Istanbul! Pics to come) but wanted to make sure I let everyone know that The American Way of Eating is up for a James Beard Award–as is a feature I wrote on farm labor, “As Common As Dirt,” in The American Prospect In the event that you do not follow the food world, this is a big honor in those parts.
I’ve got enough of a punk in me to still feel conflicted about this; there’s a lot of money and pomp poured into a celebration of the monied and well-connected, and that’s not really my thing.
But here’s what IS cool:
It’s a recognition by somewhat powerful people that there is real value in writing, and thinking, about food as it works in the lives of our poor and working classes. It suggests that maybe, just maybe, there is the inkling of a change in the way we grape with food afoot, And I am all about that.
Many thanks to the endless list of people who’ve supported me in my work. I very literally popular not have done it without you
EatDrink Politics • Feb. 15, 2013
This week I’ve been writing about the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) and why we should careabout food workers, in part to bring attention to the new book Behind the Kitchen Door by labor advocate Saru Jayaraman. Today I want to offer practical resources for how to help improve the lives of the 20 million food workers who help us put food on our own tables every day.
Continue reading “Fighting the Other NRA – Resources to Support Food Workers”
Marketplace Money • Oct. 29, 2012
We come face to face with food every day — from the supermarket aisle to leftover cake at the office. But we can’t always take that food at face value. Understanding what we eat and what goes into the cost of what we eat takes a little digging. Continue reading “Marketplace Money: Looking at the way we eat in America”
The American Prospect • Sept. 11, 2012
“As Common as Dirt” is the 2013 James Beard Award winner in the Politics/Policy/Environment category.
One morning earlier this year, in the borderland town of Brawley, California, 75-year-old Ignacio Villalobos perched on a chair in his trailer, removed a plastic bag from the well of a rubber boot, and finished dressing for work. Dawn was still an hour away, and in the wan light of the kitchen, Villalobos took off his house sandals and pulled the bag over his right foot. He bunched it at the ankle, then slipped his foot into his boot. Continue reading “As Common As Dirt”
CNN.com eatocracy • Aug. 8, 2012
A few months ago, a small farmer in the Northeast approached me at a conference, intense and red-faced. How could I say that Americans shouldn’t pay more for their food?
She sold lettuce and beets to well-heeled women, their ears dangling gold and fingers sporting diamonds. Yet many of them balked at the prospect of paying an extra dollar per pound. To grow her food without extensive chemicals, and to sell her wares at market, she needed to fetch a higher price. Surely, couldn’t these women pay more? Continue reading “Where does your grocery money go? Mostly not to the farmers”
970 WFLA • Feb. 23, 2012
Tracie McMillan on The American Way of Eating. Continue reading “Dispatches From Bitter America – 970 WFLA”
