FERN’s Friday Feed: A biogas boondoggle
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The hog industry hops on the renewable energy bandwagon
FERN and Sierra Magazine
“Industrial hog farms are ramping up efforts to convert methane from swine waste into biogas—a fuel that can heat homes, produce electricity, and power vehicles—by fitting waste lagoons with airtight covers that trap the methane for collection,” writes Barry Yeoman. “Smithfield says that it’s “a good steward of the environment” for producing what the industry calls “renewable natural gas.” It said in 2018 that it expected more than 90 percent of its North Carolina hog-finishing operations to produce biogas within a decade. Prestage Farms is exploring the possibility too. Critics believe that it’s little more than an effort by the hog industry to greenwash its image.”
How one overdose death at sea transformed a fishing fleet
The New York Times Magazine
“Since the opioid crisis hit the United States in the late 1990s, no community has been spared,” writes C.J. Chivers. “The death toll includes victims from all walks of life, but multiple studies illuminate how fatalities cluster along occupational lines. A 2022 report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health noted that employees in fishing, forestry, agriculture and hunting had the highest rates of all industries, closely followed by workers in construction trades … In fishing fleets, the reasons are many and clear. First is the grueling nature of the job. ‘The fishing industry and the relationship to substance use is the story of pain, mental and physical pain, and the lack of access to support,’ says J.J. Bartlett, president and founder of Fishing Partnership Support Services, a nonprofit that provides free safety training to fishing communities in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic.”
How the fridge changed flavor
The New Yorker
“Today, nearly three-quarters of everything Americans consume is processed, packaged, shipped, and stored under refrigeration,” writes Nicola Twilley. “In the century since Chicago’s banquet, the so-called cold chain—the shipping containers, trucks, warehouses, ripening rooms, tank farms, walk-ins, and fridges through which food moves from farm to table—has transformed what we eat, where it’s grown, the layout of our cities and homes, and the very definition of freshness. But perhaps its most remarkable imprint can still be found in how our food actually tastes, for better and for worse.”
What a year on Ozempic taught Johann Hari
The Atlantic
“Why does [Johann] Hari feel ashamed? For one thing,” writes Daniel Engber, “he’s on Ozempic. Hari doesn’t really need to take Ozempic, but he’s on it nonetheless: That’s the premise of the book, as laid out from the start. He decided, ‘quite abruptly’ as he puts it in the introduction, to begin injections. It was 2022, and his pandemic BMI had risen to a hair over 30, just high enough to qualify for a prescription. Going on it ‘was a snap decision,’ he explains, ‘and later I realized I was driven by impulses I didn’t fully understand at the time.’ A methodical examination of those impulses unspools from there: Across the book’s 12 chapters, Hari will ask himself why he can’t just stop eating. Why should he need the help of a powerful drug to lose weight? Where, he’ll wonder again and again, is his willpower? There are scientific answers to those questions, and also there are moral ones.”
The best restaurant in town
Taste
“Because slinging myself between work and kids and our two proscribed units of fun every week can shrink-wrap our lives, and I often feel my zone of comfort narrow with it. Suddenly,” writes Priyanka Mattoo, “everyone we know plans their fun units by consulting the same three food maps, grumbling about not wanting to waste a meal. And with the rising costs of dining out, taking a chance on something new or untested can also mean a significant financial hit. But the best restaurant in town reminds us that we weren’t meant to travel through the world like it’s a listicle-driven scavenger hunt. We are meant to travel through it porous, full of curiosity, inviting serendipity and connection. We are meant to crave Burmese food on a Tuesday and see that craving through with a thorough internet search that leads us to a scrappy young woman with a pop-up. She posts on Instagram one day saying she has to fold and is selling all of her leftover bags of fermented tea leaves. She says that they freeze well, and I tell her I want them for homemade lahpet thoke, but we talk logistics, and it turns out I can’t make it across the city in time.”