KIDAY, Philippines — Gloomy skies don’t dampen the spirit of Virginia Nazareno as she happily waters organic vegetables on an April morning in Kiday, a sitio or hamlet on the…
FERRISBURGH, Vermont — The home that farmer Erik Andrus built with his wife, Erica, sits on a slight rise above a stretch of fields that have been subjected to a…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
PARAÍBA VALLEY, Brazil — Under the frigid morning air of the Mantiqueira Mountains in southeastern Brazil, honeybees begin leaving the hive. “When day breaks they are calmer,” says Mara Galvão,…
Brazilian soybean producers have been highly successful in using genome technology to benefit their crops, with huge economic and environmental gains, a new paper highlights. Currently, the growers are using…
SORONG, Indonesia — Thriving across half a hectare in the hills of West Papua’s Mariat district are mustard greens, long beans, spinach, chilies and tomatoes. There’s also fruit such as…
Organic, shade-grown, bird-friendly: coffee comes with a lot of labels these days, certifications that tell the consumer their beans were farmed in a way that supports the people who grow…
On May 16, Natalha Theofilo rushed her 1-year-old son to the public hospital on the Trans-Amazonian Highway in the Brazilian state of Pará. Erasmo Alves Theofilo, her husband, waited outside…
SANTIAGO ATITLÁN, Mexico – Lucio Jimenez Ocampo is always surrounded by coffee. In the yard of his house in Santiago Atitlán nestled in the Oaxaca state’s Sierra Norte highlands, there…
BLANTYRE, Malawi — A harvest of just four sacks of maize, each weighing 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, means only four and a half months of food security for Ellena…
Today we’re talking about agroecology, which applies ecological principles to agricultural systems and is considered to be a key strategy for both mitigating and adapting to global climate change, as…
For the past decade, an association of small farmers has been growing vegetables amid a strip of filao trees that grow on the sand dunes along the coastline in the…
TERNATE, Indonesia — It’s a sunny day in January in Indonesia’s North Maluku province, and Kamil Ishak is looking at the crops on his organic farm. “I was introduced to…
SHOUF BIOSPHERE RESERVE, Lebanon — Late afternoon light falls across Talal Riman’s weathered face as he stands under the ancient cedars he’s tended for almost three decades in Lebanon’s Shouf…
BIKITA, Zimbabwe — Nothing seems to happen at the right time for Maria Mazambara, a communal subsistence farmer in Bikita, one of Zimbabwe's southernmost rural districts. “The seed we get…
Smallholder farmers say agroforestry offers biodiversity and crop benefits, but lack of support from the Bolsonaro government is a key barrier to adopting restorative agricultural practices.
KAVREPALANCHOK, Nepal — Ram Shrestha is spraying pesticide on his potato plants next to a paved road. The cracked earth seems lifeless here in this part of Kavrepalanchok district, a…
Over recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of the bitter-sweet legacy left by the chocolate industry in the countries that supply a majority of the world’s cocoa. While cocoa…
In Gribe, a village located in southeastern Cameroon, the Indigenous Baka of Dimgba are one of dozens of hunter-gatherer groups of the Congo basin diversifying their food sources to maintain…
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 46 cotton-farming families in Brazil’s Minas Gerais began practicing agroecology, a sustainable farming approach that works with nature.
A long drought followed by a strong freeze in 2020 damaged the coffee harvest in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the crop. To take on the challenges brought on by the changing climate, coffee farmers in the Cerrado have joined a climate-smart agriculture program.
Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth's land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction by 2030, according to a…
KARUNGARU, Kenya — Karungaru village in eastern Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi county is dry — so dry that even the resilient acacia trees have shed their leaves to cope. But amid…
SINGAPORE — On a vast plateau atop Jingmai Mountain in Yunnan, China, nearly a mile above sea level, grows a forest of ancient tea trees. During summer, silvery cobwebs line…
PITU SUNGGU, Indonesia — Arief Sore holds up a clutch of desiccated rice stalks a short distance from the unusual arable field he tills in Pangkep district on Indonesia's Sulawesi…
Like many rural families in Central America, Martín García and his sons devoted part of every growing season to slashing and burning a new strip of their land, knowing that…
When farmer Mônica de Souza Ribeiro moved into her landless settlement in the state of Goiás in central Brazil in the late 1990s, she was overwhelmed by the sheer amount…
NAIROBI — Munene Njoka, a young farmer from central Kenya, is furious. The reason for his rage is a bundle of decaying maize stacked in a corner of his home.…
Consider the bee. It’s small, and while over a lifetime it can pollinate up to 5,000 flowers, that’s only enough to produce a single teaspoon of honey. But bees don’t…
About a quarter of the world’s land is degraded. A new farming system intercrops agave and mesquite, then ferments it into cheap fodder, promising restored semiarid croplands and a peasant farming revival.
