Civil Eats

In 2024, Civil Eats welcomed two new board members: Sam Mogannam, the second-generation owner of San Francisco-based Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, and Thomas Huang, assistant managing editor for journalism initiatives at The Dallas Morning News. After nine years, and nearly a year of intensive work, Civil Eats removed its paywall in September 2024, receiving an outpouring of positive feedback from members, new readers, and news media. In addition to a remarkably smooth launch of its newly accessible site, Civil Eats also launched a successful membership drive. In 2024, Civil Eats undertook a year-long investigation that resulted in the five-part series Chemical Capture: The Power and Impact of the Pesticide Industry. It examined whether consolidated corporate power may be contributing to the ubiquitous use of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals, and whether the influence that chemical companies wield in the halls of power make it difficult to sort facts from marketing or engage in rigorous cost-benefit analyses. Oceans reporting fellow, Alexandra Talty, undertook a year-long fellowship with the Pulitzer Center. Her series of four articles, Kelps Tangled Lines, on the present and future of the U.S. kelp industry in the food system, were well received and picked up by multiple outlets and media partner, Public News Service, produced two radio versions of the stories. Civil Eats also undertook a five-part series, Climate on the Menu, produced in partnership with Eater. As the restaurant industry struggles to cope with hotter temperatures, floods, supply disruptions, escalating costs, and other impacts from climate change, the series covered how some businesses are finding resourceful, workable ways of addressing the crisis. Civil Eats also launched its series Planting the Seeds of Justice, which continued into 2025. In this series, the site deepened its long-standing environmental justice reporting by focusing on the connections between climate, health, soil health, and equity for farmers of color. The team investigated new and viable solutions for farmers, producers, scientists, and advocates as they seek to right historical wrongs from the ground up. The team also completed its first Crash Course in July 2024, a four-week email series that offered a quick education on different ways the climate crisis is affecting the food system, with an emphasis on some of the solutions we have reported on in the past 16 years. Participants received four emails over the course of the month and were invited to a special Slack channel to discuss the topics. In a fraught media landscape, Civil Eats has withstood the shocks faced by many larger and more deeply funded news outlets. It has stood the test of time, proving itself to be an extremely careful steward of its funding, and a groundbreaking thought-leader in this space.