The U.S. food economy is in dire need of transformation. Many of our rural communities are suffering, small and mid-sized farms are becoming less and less tenable, and it is increasingly difficult to trust that the food we buy will be safe to eat.
Read moreThe Salinas Valley is known for its enormous industrial farms that grow produce like lettuce and broccoli. But just southeast of the city of Salinas, a patchwork of much smaller organic fruit and vegetable fields breaks the industrial sprawl. Start-up farmers tend these fields morning, afternoon and night. When the sun sets, they pull out headlamps and cellphones to illuminate their rows of crops.
Read moreWith a climate changing faster than most crops can adapt and food security under threat around the world, scientists have found hope in a living museum dedicated to a staple eaten by millions daily: the humble potato.
Read moreThey are working to repair harm inflicted over the past 400 years, with an eye toward reparations. “Imagine your neighbor stole your cow. A few weeks later the neighbor comes over, laden with remorse, to offer a sincere apology and a promise to make it right. The neighbor offers to atone by giving you half a pound of butter every week for the rest of the cow’s life. What do you think of that?”
Read moreThe supermarket of the future will use smart technology to eliminate plastic packaging, to incentivize the use of reusable containers, and to retain loyal customers. This is the message from Greenpeace in its latest report released on Tuesday, "The Smart Supermarket: How retailers can innovate beyond single-use plastics and packaging."
Read moreMoved by a moral obligation to “tell it like it is,” more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have released a statement warning humanity of the “catastrophic threat” we face as the climate emergency continues apace. Without transformative changes to save the biosphere, they warn, there will be “untold suffering due to the climate crisis.”
Read moreSparks flew a hundred feet in the air. Bare metal shrieked as powerful jolts of electricity passed through a furnace that melts scrap — like old cars and tossed-out refrigerators — into puddles, turning them into shiny recycled steel.
Read moreAccording to the US Department of Labor, more than 2 million children in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire work in hazardous conditions growing cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate. While some companies have begun tracing their supply chains to prevent child labor, the vast majority of the 3 million tons of cocoa produced each year come from small farms in West Africa, where farmers and their children live on less than $1 per day.
Read moreClayton Brascoupé has farmed in the red-brown foothills of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains for more than 45 years. A Mohawk-Anishnaabe originally from a New York reservation, Brascoupé married into the Pueblo of Tesuque tribe and has since planted at least 60 varieties of corns, beans, squashes, and other heirloom crops grown for millennia by the area’s Native Americans.
Read moreWhat’s wrong with my stomach? Can the pain in my hand go away? How do I feel better? While nurses and doctors are there to solve those problems, they’re also working to prevent future ones. Simplified, a hospital’s job is twofold: react and prevent. On the roof of the Boston Medical Center, they’re preventing by growing.
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