Editor’s Desk: A good night at the Beard Awards —and a busy month at FERN

By Theodore Ross

The James Beard Media Awards are one of the most prestigious honors out there for folks like us at FERN, who make journalism about food and the environment. That’s why it is such a pleasure that we won in the “Columns and Newsletters” category, for three articles from “The Farm Bill Fight,” a FERN Special Series on the omnibus legislation that oversees the country’s agriculture and food security programs. 

Congratulations to FERN staffer Teresa Cotsirilos, who wrote “The essential workers missing from the farm bill”; former FERN staffer Bridget Huber, for “Tribal nations want more control over their food supply”; and Claire Kelloway, who wrote “The farm bill hall of shame.” These are three incisive, timely articles on our food system, and it’s terrific that our peers recognized their work. 

Congratulations, as well, to our partner, Mother Jones. We’ve done a lot of great journalism over the years with Mojo and its audio outlet, Reveal, and it’s nice to know that other people are noticing how well this collaboration works. 

Typically, these Editor’s Desks run short, but we’ve had a lot going on lately that I want to let you know about.

First, from regular FERN contributor Boyce Upholt, there’s “Caught!” and “Something Fishy”,  a multiformat project — one story, told as text and audio — that we did in partnership with the magazine Inc. and Gravy, a podcast from the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s about seafood fraud at Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, an iconic restaurant in my part-time hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. (I was raised in New York City and on the Gulf Coast.) 

We have two other audio projects out. There’s “Fertilizer’s Toxic Journey,” from Garrett Hazelwood and Eric Schmid, produced in partnership with our friends at Sea Change, from WWNO in New Orleans. It is a story about synthetic fertilizer and how it’s poisoning communities, upending livelihoods, and choking the life out of a huge swath of the Gulf of Mexico. And there’s “Reviving the Grange,” from Lisa Morehouse and KQED’s The California Report podcast about how, in a moment of deep divisions, the nation’s oldest agricultural advocacy group is still reaching across the aisle.

Next, from Meera Subramanian, is “How fungi are surviving—and even thriving—in a warming world,” a deeply personal essay published in partnership with Orion Magazine about the biodiversity of mushrooms in a changing climate. 

Last but not least is “Trump’s assault on small farmers,” by Teresa Cotsirilos, in partnership again with Mother Jones. Teresa takes you inside how Trump administration cuts are hurting farmers around the country.

Okay, if you made it this far, I want to say that all of this strong, engaging work exemplifies what we’re about at FERN: Special Series, multiformat, longform text, podcast (investigative and narrative), science-driven essay, short-form argument, with partners that include a business publication, a political magazine, a literary journal, and three podcasts from two NPR affiliates and the University of Mississippi.

At FERN, our goal is to help create a more equitable and sustainable food system in this country. Our part in achieving that is to find stories that we care about and get them to as many people as we can, in the ways that they want to engage with them. That’s our mission and our philosophy, and we believe in it. I hope you do, too, and that you’ll consider making a donation to help us keep at it.