If you took the NUTR 238 final exam last week, you’ll know that this year’s questions involved news clippings from the past month’s food policy news, about SNAP restrictions, trade policy, pesticides and monopolies.

Now that class is over, a great to new way to follow these and other stories is via the Tufts library’s new subscription to an daily newsletter from FERN called AgInsider. You can get the daily headlines via email by signing up at thefern.org (scroll down to see link),  and if you have a Tufts login you can see the articles here.

For Tufts affiliates, one useful trick is to have your browser redirect the newsletter links to that library subscription.  I use this one: http://einaregilsson.com/redirector, for which the configuration is:

https://thefern.org/ag_insider/*
https://thefern-org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/ag_insider/$1
https://thefern.org/ag_insider/xxx
               https://thefern-org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/ag_insider/xxx
Main window (address bar)

Among other newsletters my top choices are:  for US food news in general, the brilliant New Food Economy’s Weekly Dish; for US food policy news, Politico’s Morning Agriculture (subscription needed for Pro articles only) and Farm Policy News  (was subscription only, now free thanks to Univ. of Illinois); for global food issues, the Chicago Council’s weekly Food for Thought news brief.

And if you actually get away from the screen occasionally, I’ll toss in a plug for the podcast revolution:  I don’t have a favorite one on food policy – instead I occasionally listen to stuff about food culture, like Gastropod, Sporkful and the Eater Upsell, lots of academic wonkery with Tyler Cowan or LSE lectures, and find many great episodes about food policy issues on Planet Money.  Fiction is good too, with great scripted drama like Bronzeville and Homecoming, and yes, music:  my beloved Econotunes, and songs that play with food.

Happy summer!

Will

 

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