Civil Eats Launches a New Crash Course on Civics and the Food System

This four-part email course covers the federal government’s role in what we eat, and what’s happening as the system is being pressure-tested.

By The Civil Eats Editors

September 15, 2025

Since our founding in 2009, Civil Eats has been reporting on the ways that food policy shapes what we grow, harvest, sell, and eat. We accelerated our coverage this year with the launch of our Food Policy Tracker, which is documenting the day-to-day news coming out of Washington, D.C. during the second Trump administration.

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Today, on International Democracy Day, Civil Eats is launching our latest Crash Course: Civics and the Food System. Our email-based courses are intended to give readers a quick but thorough overview of a topic central to Civil Eats’ mission—the U.S. food system.

Recognizing that now more than ever, we need to understand the way our government’s daily decisions and actions can affect people around the world, we created a course to give the public a high-level review of who the government is and what it does—and what happens when the system is being pressure-tested.

This Crash Course examines the different federal agencies that oversee, regulate, and shape food policy and practice. And we explain the biggest food policy levers: the farm bill, the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, the Food Safety Modernization Act, and much more.

We also review the changes that have been implemented and proposed since the start of President Trump’s second administration. Finally, we step away from Washington, D.C., to look at how states are laboratories for changing food policy at the national level.

Along the way, experts will share their perspectives on these topics and provide resources—both from Civil Eats’ 16 years of reporting and elsewhere—where you can continue to educate and empower yourself and your communities.

We piloted our first Crash Course in June 2024, with Climate Solutions in Food & Farming, which explored how climate change is impacting the food system, and some of the solutions that can address those impacts.

You can enroll in the Crash Course here—sign up today!

If you’d like to be notified about new courses, please make sure you’re signed up for our weekly newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we announce the next course.

Civil Eats is powered by readers like you. Your gift of $100 or more by September 30 helps sustain our award-winning journalism-and unlocks this Crash Course, along with opportunities to connect with our team and a network for food system leaders.

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Civil Eats is a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, and we count on our members to keep producing our award-winning work.

Readers like you are the reason why we’re able to keep digging deep into stories you won’t find anywhere else. When you become a member, your support directly funds our journalism—from paying our reporters to keeping the internet on in our remote offices across the United States.

Your membership will also come with great benefits, including our award-winning newsletter, The Deep Dish, which is full of relevant and timely reporting, access to our members’ Slack community, and online salons as a way to engage with reporters, food and agriculture experts, and each other.

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Since 2009, the Civil Eats editorial team has published award-winning and groundbreaking news and commentary about the American food system, and worked to make complicated, underreported stories—on climate change, the environment, social justice, animal welfare, policy, health, nutrition, and the farm bill—more accessible to a mainstream audience. Read more >

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Food Policy

HARRINGTON, MAINE - AUGUST 08: Brandon Mott loads boxes of wild blueberries onto a truck as they harvest them from the plants in the fields of independent wild Maine blueberry grower Lynch Hill Farms on August 08, 2025 in Harrington, Maine. Independent wild Maine blueberry growers in the state are experiencing challenging times as their crops face several threats posed by climate change, from increased frequency of extreme weather events like droughts, floods, destructive frost, and warmer temperatures. Courtney Hammond, Lynch Hill Farms Manager, thinks his business is possibly in jeopardy as his crops are producing fewer marketable berries than normal. He, along with other independent growers, continues to try to adapt to the weather, but they could be reaching the point of no return, said Mr. Hammond. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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Civil Eats Launches a New Crash Course on Civics and the Food System