Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Civil Eats
“The Coalition of Immokalee Workers runs live, interactive, peer-to-peer trainings that use theater, artwork, and real situations to teach workers about their rights … CIW has conducted 775 in-person sessions that have educated more than 60,000 workers across seven East Coast states,” writes Vera L. Chang. “When farmworkers have the opportunity to transform their work culture on their own terms, they seize it.”
For nearly two months, nothing but soup
Food52
A gastrointestinal disorder forced Alex Egan to dramatically change her diet, and ultimately to rely on soup for her meals for 54 days. “Looking back now, it’s still hard to comprehend how this condition that had been completely unknown to me only a few years ago could so suddenly turn food — one of the most fundamental and enjoyable aspects of my life — into a genuine fear,” Egan writes. “Making and eating soup took up all of my free time and energy.”
In Virginia, an organic upstart is changing the chicken business
The Counter
Unlike conventional chicken processors, Shenandoah Valley Organic “does not supply its growers with company-owned chicks or feed,” writes Andrew Jenner. “Instead, its growers buy their own organic-certified chicks and feed and, as long as they meet SVO’s protocols … are pretty much free to raise their chickens however they like in whatever kind of facility they have. In return for that greater up-front investment and risk exposure … growers enjoy more independence” and higher profit margins.
The New Yorker
“Today, South Korea recycles ninety-five per cent of its food waste, but twenty-five years ago almost nothing was recycled,” writes Rivka Galchen. Here’s how they did it, and why the U.S., which, thanks to tons of rotting food waste, “has greater landfill emissions than any other country, the equivalent of thirty-seven million cars on the road each year,” should pay attention.
Is your honey fake?
Vice
“Bee populations across the country are declining for many reasons, like exposure to insecticide and fungicide, disease, and mites, ultimately causing colonies to collapse,” writes Shayla Love. “But there’s another threat within the honey community that’s intimately entwined with the lives of bees and their beekeepers, one that is largely unknown outside their world: honey fraud.”