What Could The Pacific Trade Deal Mean for Diets?

NPR The Salt • May 11, 2015

If you think trade deals are just about business, think again. They can also have a sweeping effect on how people eat. Take all those avocados, watermelon and cervezasfrom Mexico we now consume, and the meat and feed corn for livestock we send there in exchange.

The Obama administration hasn’t shared much detail about the provisions in its controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade deal between the U.S. and 11 countries currently being negotiated. But if it’s anything like prior free trade agreements, two things are likely, trade experts say.

Read more

Why Some Schools Serve Local Food And Others Can’t (Or Won’t)

NPR The Salt • March 11, 2015 

For many years, if a public school district wanted to serve students apples or milk from local farmers, it could face all kinds of hurdles. Schools were locked into strict contracts with distributors, few of whom saw any reason to start bringing in local products. Those contracts also often precluded schools from working directly with local farmers.

Read more

A Detroit Opera Celebrates Frida Kahlo’s Life And Cooking

NPR.org — The Salt  Feb. 25, 2015

The life of Frida Kahlo seems tailor-made for an opera: pain, love, art, travel and revolution. So the Michigan Opera Theater’s decision to mount a production of the opera Frida, opening Mar. 7 in Detroit — where the iconic painter lived with her husband, Diego Rivera, for nearly a year, and where she survived a miscarriage that marked a turning point in her art — isn’t so surprising.

But here’s something that is: The opera is celebrating not only Kahlo’s art and life, but her recipes and cooking, too.

Read more

How NAFTA Changed American (And Mexican) Food Forever

NPR.org — The Salt • Feb. 13, 2015

If you were to try and list the biggest game-changers for the American food system in the last two decades, you might note the Food Network, or the writing of Michael Pollan, or maybe even the evolution of Walmart.

But you’d probably overlook NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And that would be a mistake, according to a lengthy report out early February from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read more

Florida Tomato Pickers’ Wins Could Extend To Dairy, Berry Workers

NPR.org – The Salt • Dec. 12, 2014

Farm workers in America have long been among the nation’s poorest paid and most abused workers. But conditions have been improving for Florida tomato pickers, and those advances may soon reach other farm fields, according to the annual report released Thursday by the Fair Food Standards Council, or FFSC, a labor oversight group based in Sarasota, Fla.

Read more

Follow Tracie

Follow Tracie on Facebook
Follow Tracie on X (Twitter)
Follow Tracie on Instagram
Get Tracie's Newsletter