A tight-knit group of oystermen on the bayou are struggling to survive after the oil spill shut down the oyster beds. Will a way of life die out? Part 2 of Losing Louisiana, a series originally published in onEarth. ELTON “HAMBONE” ENCALADE IS ONE OF THE FIRST oystermen to greet me as I pull into Beshel’s […]
Losing Louisiana
Originally published in OnEarth. The BP blowout caused months of pain and suffering for the people and environment of the Gulf Coast. But Louisiana was in trouble long before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Its wetlands are disappearing at the rate of a football field every hour due to rising sea level, storm damage, and the […]
The Wal-Mart Effect
By stocking its shelves with inexpensive organic foods, the world’s largest retailer is about to prove that what’s good for the company is good for the planet and consumers. Or is it? Originally published in Audubon. SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK, A BLUE TRUCK with a stainless steel collection tank drives up a newly blacktopped road in Guilford, […]
Is the U.S. government making children fat?
Originally published in Nieman Reports. WHEN I AGREED TO WRITE about school lunches for the magazine Mother Jones, conventional wisdom tying junk food to childhood obesity was so rampant that I could have produced a serviceable story with very little research. Reading newspapers and talking with food professionals and government officials, I repeatedly heard that the nation’s biggest nutrition […]
Unhappy Meals
School lunches are loaded with fat—and the beef and dairy industries are making sure it stays that way. Originally published in Mother Jones. EVERY WEEKDAY AT LUNCH, courtesy of the federal government, more than 27 million schoolchildren sit down to the nation’s largest mass feeding. If we took a giant snapshot of their trays on a typical […]
Silence in the Fields
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign ‘guestworkers.’ The conditions are hardly hospitable—and those who speak out can be sent straight back home. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE GREYHOUND PULLS UP TO A TWO-STORY METAL WAREHOUSE in the tiny town of Vass, North Carolina. Efrain Madrigal gets off the bus. […]
Dangerous Food
When Nancy Donley’s son died of E. coli poisoning, she learned how poorly we are all protected from food contamination. Originally published in Redbook. A MOP-TOPPED REDHEAD WITH OVERSIZE GLASSES that magnified his gray eyes, 6-year-old Alex Donley was always on the prowl for someone he could cheer up with a hug and a gap-toothed smile. He […]
Don’t Count Your Chickens
Click here for “Don’t Count Your Chickens,” Southern Exposure, Summer 1989
