Agriculture

I once scorned my grandmother's basement of Mason-jarred produce. Now I understand why she thought it was so important.

As large poultry producers hit production roadblocks, their small-scale counterparts are adapting to a surge in demand.

About half of the nation's food is typically consumed in group settings like restaurants and schools. Quickly rerouting the supply chain isn't easy.

"If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms."

The pandemic-driven demand spike is more hiccup than disruption. But for regional grain economies, it's a grueling, make-or-break test.

Coursing through the veins of the modern world and the modern subject alike, coffee is the spirit of exploitation in brewed form.

A West Bend farm says it was told to start dumping tens of thousands of gallons of milk per day because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When farmers reduce tilling, plant cover crops and speckle their steads with livestock and trees, they're helping fight climate change and bolstering their bottom lines.

Farm workers work, live and travel in crowded conditions, and are being allowed few if any safety measures against COVID-19 — which puts them and the food system at risk.

Despite repeated maladies that have threatened their existence, navel oranges continue to brighten our fruit bowls. They're the seedless mutants that are too delicious to let die.

Negative headlines about organic farming's carbon footprint are missing the bigger picture about its environmental benefits.

A socialist biologist explains the tight links between new viruses, industrial food production, and the profitability of multinational corporations.

The right-to-repair movement has come to the heartland, where some farmers are demanding access to the software that runs their equipment.

Indigenous farmers in Utah are championing an ancient spud.

Rising soil salinity is a serious, climate change-linked issue that producers are increasingly struggling with.

If the world's population grows to 10 billion by 2050 as projected, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food. Without major changes to the food system, that would result in a catastrophic increase in greenhouse gas pollution.

The rancid smell of hog facilities in North Carolina has led to a dirty and protracted legal battle.

Vertical farming could make agriculture more robust and sustainable. To unlock that potential, scientists are redesigning crops for urban life.

As supersize vehicles bear heavier loads, maintenance budgets can't keep up. Meet the Wisconsin farmers paying the price.

An anthropologist works to give producers a voice in the chocolate industry, taking a lesson from high-end coffee, wine and cheese.

After more than a decade experimenting with grapes that wouldn't ripen outdoors or ripened too late, most people would've given up. This man didn't.

With the United States' population expected to grow an additional 100 million people in the next century, it's interesting to see how are we're currently utilizing our land.

Tractors built in 1980 or earlier cause bidding wars at auctions.

As more of us switch to plant-based protein, real meat seems increasingly obsolete — but the demise of animal agriculture comes with some serious global side effects.

Humble fields become abstracted artworks in thread paintings by Victoria Rose Richards.

Meet Black Sion. He has shiny black hair, kind eyes and a body that's built for pleasure — ready to father up to 50 children as early as tomorrow.

Potato growers across the US and Canada are projecting that this year's harvest will be the weakest in nearly a decade.

It's not just humans who can benefit from VR. Moscow-area farmers strapped modified VR headsets to cows to see if it improved their mood.

Yes, but modern farms deprive them of meaningful companionship.

Why we're skeptical, and how the government encourages our skepticism.

Saffron is currently mostly imported from Iran. What if we grew our own, in New England?

Farmers are scrambling to cash in on the CBD boom. But when their hemp crops tip over the 0.3% legal limit for THC, they lose everything.

An exodus of grocery stores is turning rural towns into food deserts. But some are fighting back by opening their own local markets.

In May 1982, with the help of Public Art Fund, Denes planted around two acres of wheat in downtown Manhattan at the old Battery Park Landfill.

"The air is literally unbreathable, pestilential."

"It was just the right timing," says Mads. "It was just luck."

The hidden pipe problem associated with agriculture.

Cuthbert the Goose, Trigger the Pig and others went viral in America — and helped British children in the process.

There are still cowboys driving livestock across America in 2019. While most of us are snoozing, they're rolling up to dark fields with trucks full of creatures that are critical to our nation's agriculture: thousands and thousands of bees.

Sometimes you have to leave "why?" at the door and embrace the madness.

Here, podcasters Brendan O'Hare and Cory Snearowski have crafted a soundscape that's sort of in line with what you might expect from "Tim and Eric" or "I Think You Should Leave." It's great.

It is likely that honey bees, along with sheep and goats, were among the first creatures to start moving down a path toward domestication when agriculture emerged and spread out of Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago.

And why today's banana companies are afraid. Very afraid.

The job means you're removed from society and have to cook with limited resources — and you never quite get all the kief off your fingers..

Have spider mites on your alocacia? Struggling with root rot? Chances are Instagram influencers like Christine Kelso, Jennifer Tao, Brandon Jeon, Darlene Zavala and Danae Horst (gardening gurus with more than 300,000 followers among them) have the answers you're seeking.

Maple season is in full effect for these fourth-generation sugar makers.

We're feeling awfully deprived now that we're doubtful that we've ever eaten real "wasabi."

Farmers aren't producing enough to keep up with the number of smaller markets that keep popping up, often in close proximity to others.

This Christmas, like every other, I traveled to northern Wisconsin to stay with my parents on the dairy farm I grew up on. As usual I took the opportunity to help my dad and younger brother with barn chores and milk cows. I didn't help out every shift but I worked more than enough to once again be humbled about the life I left behind and recalibrate my nostalgia.

The movement's values are broadly back-to-the-land, but it contains members on- and off-grid, vegans and experts in hunting and butchery, Floridians harvesting 100-pound bunches of bananas and Alaskans chiseling ice off their outhouses.

If anything, the rise of farm-raised fish has increased our desire for seafood.

The GOP's latest attack against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal is dishonest. But history shows why it might work.

His chestnut forest is home to thousands of hens.

A "plant explorer" helped establish the crop in California.

Smallhold, a Brooklyn-based company that builds high-tech, climate-controlled "Minifarms" that grow mushrooms, has been rolling out its wares in the New York area in restaurants and more recently, Whole Foods.

Follow fourth-generation sugar cane farmer Wenceslaus "June" Provost Jr. as he fights to protect his family's agricultural legacy.

As corporations rush in to make a buck, some farmers are pushing back — and fighting for the soul of organic food.

The farm bill on Trump's desk funds programs that help make farming more accessible.

Monsanto's new herbicide was supposed to save US farmers from financial ruin. Instead, it upended the agriculture industry, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a struggle for survival.

So-called "deep farms" need vertical shafts close to towns. Coal mines might be just the ticket.