Tom Philpott

For five years, Tom Philpott served as a columnist, food editor, and senior food writer for the online environmental site Grist. He's a cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Before moving to the farm in 2004, Philpott worked as a financial journalist in Mexico City and New York, most recently writing daily dispatches on the stock market as equity research editor for Reuters.com. His work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica, and the Guardian. Maverick Farms has been featured in Gourmet and the New York Times, and in September 2008, Food & Wine named Philpott one of "ten innovators" who "will continue to shape the culinary consciousness of our country for the next 30 years." In 2011, he was a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award—the "Oscars of the food world," as Time put it—in the "Food-Related Columns and Commentary" category.