Our Impact

In May 2013, “Antibiotics In Your Food: What’s Causing The Rise In Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria In Our Food Supply,” appeared in the popular consumer magazine, EatingWell. Reporter Barry Estabrook took a deep dive into the growing issue of antibiotic resistance due to routine antibiotic use in livestock production. Estabrook, author of The New York Times bestseller Tomatoland, detailed how livestock are fed a diet laced with “sub-therapeutic” doses of antibiotics, not to cure illness but to make the animals grow faster and survive cramped living conditions. EatingWell has a print circulation of 500,000 and an estimated North American audience of 1.8+ million per issue. Online, the story received over 800 likes on Facebook and 190 tweets, including by Michael Pollan (575,000+ followers), Mark Bittman (529,000+ followers), Bay Area Bites (71,000+ followers) and The Ecologist magazine (54,000 followers). The story also was highlighted by OnEarth.

“Children Left Vulnerable By World Bank Amid Push For Development,” which was published on The Huffington Post in October 2015, is the latest installment of “Evicted and Abandoned,” a yearlong investigation into the hidden toll of World Bank-financed development projects on the some of the planet’s poorest people. The story was part of a collaboration with the International Center for Investigative Journalists and HuffPost. It explores the dramatic expansion of palm-oil plantations in the rainforests of Indonesia. Reporters Jocelyn Zuckerman and Michael Hudson detail abuses committed against Batin Sembilan, an indigenous community in Sumatra that was forcibly resettled by the largest agribusiness in Asia, Wilmar International Ltd.

Our April 2014 piece for American Prospect, “Plowed Under,” looked at native grassland across America’s Western Corn Belt, which are being plowed under and replaced with row crops at an unprecedented rate. The story reached an audience of 625,000 and had more than 3,000 shares on social media.

Jane Black and Leah Douglas, in a FERN collaboration with The Washington Post, broke news on how an electronic payment system for SNAP benefits at farmers markets was floundering. A key vendor in this chain overseen by the USDA was about to exit the business, leaving 1,700 farmers markets with no way to process electronic SNAP benefits and many low-income recipients without access to fresh, local food.