Scientists working in lab

To Save the Threatened, Scientists Clone Cacao, Fertilize Mollusks, and Hunt Porpoises

All over the world, researchers are trying to better understand a world in constant flux and to prevent species from extinction as they battle for survival.
Piper Cub plane farmers

An Airplane in Every Barn?

Why airborne farming hasn’t been cleared for take-off.
Granger poster

What’s So Bad About A Monopoly?

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has drawn the ire of a new antitrust movement, which argues against the dangers of industry monopoly.
Barbed wire

How Barbed Wire Changed Farming Forever

On June 25, 1867, Lucien B. Smith of Ohio received the first patent for barbed wire. Within a few decades, barbed wire transformed the American West.
Cotton gin

Automation in the 1940s Cotton Fields

Automation is a bit of a Rorschach test for anyone interested in workers’ rights. In the 1940s, the mechanization of cotton farming changed the US economy.
corn harvest

Why Do We Have “Free Trade” For Televisions, But Not For Corn?

While the U.S. opens industries to market competition at home and abroad, we give our agricultural producers a lot of protection, including big subsidies.
Aral Sea Ships

The Agonizing Death of the Aral Sea

After decades of environmental disaster, fish and wildlife may rebound to Central Asia's Aral Sea, but the lake will never be restored to its former glory.
GMO pears

Are GM Crops Worth It?

GM crops have been controversial from the beginning. Proponents argue they are better commercially, but that analysis is coming into question.
Sheffield Radishes

Community Gardens Were All the Rage…in the 1700s

An eighteenth-century precedent for today's community gardens in Sheffield, England.
Colored illustration of blueberries

The Delicious Origins of the Domesticated Blueberry

Frederick Coville and Elizabeth White, two strangers, domesticated the blueberry together. They valued beauty and worked to support local communities.