How water became a weapon, the problem of food insecurity in the Caribbean and from blogging to a $25 million business

IIt’s been a busy week on the pace of food and agriculture: there was the House Agriculture Committee hearing of top meatpacking industry CEOs, there was there was Beyond Meat’s pop of McPlant’s fake news, and there was the first case in the United States of bird flu being transmitted to humans. The Colorado-based worker who tested positive was employed on a farm facing an outbreak in his herd, and while the virus is unlikely to mutate enough to transfer easily between humans, the case serves as a reminder that the next pandemic could come from a factory farm.

My own reports still immerse me deeply in the world of water and where it is scarce. It makes me follow my own consumption of the vital liquid in my daily life, maybe a little also a lot.

— Chloé Sorvino, editor

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What’s new

Water is emerging as a weapon of war in Ukraine and beyond. Thirst can kill, as can hunger, when essential agriculture dries up. History by yours truly.

In the Caribbean, severe food insecurity has increased. A series of World Food Program surveys found that in the English-speaking Caribbean, severe food insecurity has increased by 72% since the start of the pandemic, reports Daphne Ewing-Chow.

How deliciously Ella built a $25 million plant-based business. When Ella Mills launched her plant-based recipe blog, Deliciously Ella, in 2012, business was far from a priority. After spending a year in and out of hospital with illnesses that left her mental and physical health at rock bottom, the 20-year-old simply wanted to explore the effects that dieting less transformed could have on his health. And learn to cook in the process, writes Lela London.


II miss my trip to California last month and that little gem salad topped with anchovies from Gjusta in Venice Beach. I couldn’t resist a piece of polenta cake with orange marmalade to complete my spread.


Chloe Sorvino leads food and agriculture coverage as a staff writer on Forbes’ corporate team. Her nearly eight years of reporting at Forbes have taken her to In-N-Out Burger’s secretive test kitchen, to drought-ravaged farms in California’s Central Valley, to burned-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, to a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha, and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France. His book, Raw Deal: Hidden corruption, corporate greed and the fight for the future of meat will be published in December 2022 by Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books.

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