Category: Blog
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More Bang for Your Duck
California’s wild storms of January-February 2017 sure made this story for Comstock’s magazine a tough one to report: lots of canceled interviews, farms getting evacuated, levees needing to be repaired (and photo shoots rescheduled). But here we go! With photos by Ken James. More Bang for Your Duck After a rough few years, Sacramento Valley…
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Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Whenever I decide to write about water, I always think it’s such a good idea. Then the real work begins — breaking down and trying to make sense of the complexity around this limited natural resource in the American West, and telling a good story. And I’ll wonder, why did I do this to myself?! Writing…
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A Dry Future Weighs Heavy on California Ag
This summer, I returned to California’s Central Valley to report again on how the state’s historic drought is impacting farmers. Photojournalist Sonya Doctorian joined me. This time, I focused on how farmers are proactively responding and adapting. My story appears in High Country News, and you can read an excerpt below. A big thank you to the…
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Closing the ‘Adventure Gap’ by Getting Inner City Kids Outdoors
I’m so happy that my piece on the adventure gap has finally found a home with Earth Island Journal! Read an excerpt below. And check out this photo taken by Sonya Doctorian during a rafting trip with cityWILD in Denver, when I totally almost died. Only a few minutes before, I’d been pleasantly surprised at how easy…
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How One California Farmer is Battling the Drought
Here we have the seventh and final article in my series on American farming and food systems, as part of my participation in the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. I wrote a profile of large-scale California farmer Cannon Michael for Ensia magazine, in collaboration with the Food &…
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American Farming: Age-Old Profession Gets Young, Idealistic Upgrade
It’s the big 0-6! The sixth story in my series on farming and food systems has been published in The Guardian. An excerpt from “America’s new farmers: the age-old profession gets a young, idealistic upgrade,” is below: America’s farmers: the age-old profession gets a young, idealistic upgrade Novice farmers don’t have it easy: in addition to lack of…
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Farming Could Save Veterans, and Vice Versa
Here is the second article in my series on alternative farming and food systems. My first article was on the challenges of urban farming for Earth Island Journal. This time I focus on military veterans and farming for Newsweek. Here’s an excerpt: Farmers Could Save Veterans, and Vice Versa By Sena Christian Mornings are the hardest for…
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Cities Figure Out How To Accommodate Urban Farming
For my Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism, I’m focusing on projects related to sustainable farming. I’ll be writing several articles on this subject over the course of the next nine months, and have begun with one for Earth Island Journal on how cities facilitate or impede urban farming. Here’s an excerpt: Across the US, Cities…
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It’s Go Time
I’ve been in Boulder for a month now. Moved here from Northern California to take part in the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. After moving here and settling in, and brief forays to New York for a wedding and New Orleans for the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference,…
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My Upcoming Adventure
It’s official! I’ve been named a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism. I’ll be in Boulder, Colorado, reporting on the growth of small-scale sustainable farms in the American west and their role in transforming domestic food systems. Here’s the press release with information on my fellow, um, fellows.
Sena Christian 