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…
Plants build themselves from sunlight, water, and soil. And, as it turns out, what crops “eat” can influence the nutrients on our own plates. A recent study, published in the…
Malaysia is the second-largest palm oil producer in the world, behind only Indonesia. In 2020 alone, Malaysia was responsible for more than a quarter of global palm oil production. But…
The satellite imagery is staggering: an Antarctic ice shelf roughly the size of New York City collapsing into the ocean. Its demise, captured and reported by NASA scientists in mid-March,…
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…
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…
Panama is embracing a host of forest restoration and reforestation solutions aimed at meeting its Paris climate agreement carbon reduction goals, including agroforestry and incentivizing the planting of teak plantations.
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…
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Even as a boy, Budi Leksono knew the tamanu tree had many uses. The small, hard fruit of the tree, about the size of a pingpong ball,…
For the uninitiated, the first mouthful of the Hawaiian red algae known as limu kohu (Asparagopsis taxiformis) may be an unpleasant one: intensely iodine-rich and bitter, with all the marine…
In the Argentine city of Rosario, an award-winning urban agriculture program is marking nearly two decades as a model for how to put local farming and agroecology at the heart…
MANAKAMBAHINY ATSINANANA, Madagascar — To make a simple phone call here requires walking for at least an hour, over deforested foothills, through a small village and across a river to…
The U.S. West is already deep in drought, with forecasts for far worse this century. But there’s hope for water-stressed farms: regulators are testing solutions that rely on cooperation and bold water saving and sharing strategies.
JOCOTÁN, Guatemala - Baudilio García walks up past alternating rows of trees and dried maize lining the hillside. Together with family members, he’s preparing to substitute the crops between the…
Suzano’s vast eucalyptus plantations may soon be counted toward Brazil’s reforestation and CO2 emission reduction goals. But critics say tree farms can’t equal rainforests for carbon storage or biodiversity.
The largest and most accurate set of simulations done to date project dramatic crop productivity declines for low-latitude staples like corn in the next ten years and through 2100.
“When people see the nuts all bagged up here, they think it’s easy, but it’s really tough out there in the rainforest,” says Waratan. “You have to find them, cut…
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…
WildEast hopes to rewild large, interconnected tracts in East Anglia and also introduce regenerative farming practices on farmland still in use, but some local farmers complain the project lacks consultation.
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…
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…
Earlier this year, the Peruvian government established a new agrobiodiversity zone a tenth the size of its capital, Lima, high in the Andes. Here, in the Marcapata Ccollana community, the…
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.…
How do you get a small rancher to give up cutting trees for pasture and instead produce high-value and sustainable agricultural products without the requisite skills, money, or access to…
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Mario Quispe Hermoza, 37 years old and from the Peruvian Andes, is a man with long hair, deep reflections on nature and…
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…
MAKUENI, Kenya — A quarter of the world's 4.4 billion hectares (10.9 million acres) of cropland is degraded, often due to drying, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization…
Home to a third of the planet’s tropical forests, Brazil accounts for only 0.17% of the world’s main forest-friendly exports, new research has found. Significantly smaller nations — both in…
Farming in eastern Wyoming is not for the faint of heart. The semiarid landscape receives unpredictable weather and is considered an unforgiving environment for agriculture. Despite this, farmers have grown…
