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CREDIT: YIU YU HOI/ GETTY IMAGES After years of discussion on how genetically-modified foods should be labeled, in 2018, the USDA announced the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. Then, after additional years of planning and implementation, on January 1 of this year, the mandatory compliance date has finally passed — meaning shoppers will likely see… What You Need to Know About the New ‘Bioengineered’ Food Labels

By James Dinneen Solanum jamesii, aka the Four Corners potato, has sustained Indigenous people in the American Southwest for 11,000 years; USDA is now studying its 8-year shelf life, and its resistance to disease, heat, and drought. The future of this remarkable little potato remains unwritten. “Hello everybody,” Bruce Pavlik said to no one. It… The ancient potato of the future

By Terrence Doyle More than a billion marine animals died in the heatwave that swept across the Western U.S. and Canada last month. The climate crisis doesn’t exist in some hypothetical future — it’s already here. Tens of thousands of dead mussels lay along the coastline in Vancouver, British Columbia, boiled alive by the extreme… Climate Disaster Looks Like Thousands of Boiled-Alive Mussels on a Beach in Vancouver

By Govind Bhutada   ▼ Use This Visualization   Cocoa Cocoa From bean to bar, the cocoa supply chain is a bittersweet one. While the end product is something most of us enjoy, this also comes with a human cost. Based on how much cocoa comes from West Africa, it’s likely that most of the… COCOA: A Bittersweet Supply Chain

BY Adele Peters Around  half of the habitable land onthe planet is now used for agriculture. A millennium ago—or more recently, in the case of many countries—it was mostly wilderness. Soon, technology could reshape that balance again, bringing back acres of trees as tools to fight climate change. A new project from the global design… Why we need to ReWild our environment

Story by Gabriel Popkin Jan. 22, 2021 Maryland farmer Trey Hill pulled in a healthy haul of corn last fall and then immediately planted rye, turnips, clover and other species, which are now spreading a lush green carpet over the soil. While his grandfather, who started the family farm along the Chesapeake Bay, always planted… Planting crops — and carbon, too

By Cody Copeland for GRUNGE In the mid-1800s, a new beverage fad took over the United States and Europe. Coca wine was fortified wine infused with coca leaves, i.e., cocaine. According to The Drinks Business, the stimulating wine drink initially had the approval of everyone from U.S. presidents to Catholic popes. One such wine was… THE SECRET DEAL THAT COCA-COLA HAS WITH THE DEA

BY ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARTIN OEGGERLI This story appears in the January 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine. THE MORE SCIENTISTS investigate the microbes living inside us, the more they learn about the surprising impact of these tiny organisms on how we look, act, think, and feel. Are our health and well-being really… How trillions of microbes affect every stage of our life—from birth to old age

As a child, Suzanne Simard often roamed Canada’s old-growth forests with her siblings, building forts from fallen branches, foraging mushrooms and huckleberries and occasionally eating handfuls of dirt (she liked the taste). Her grandfather and uncles, meanwhile, worked nearby as horse loggers, using low-impact methods to selectively harvest cedar, Douglas fir and white pine. They… The Social Life of Forests By Ferris Jabr

By Wolf Richter Eight months into the Pandemic, about 78% of the US restaurants that had taken reservations before the Pandemic took reservations again during the last week in October, the highest since the start of the Pandemic, according to data from OpenTable. This does not include fast-food restaurants, delis, drive-throughs, cafés, and other types… The State of American Restaurants, by City, November Update

On September 12, Iverson Family Farms posted ominous images on social media of their fields under a ruddy red sky, thick with a stagnant, dense haze—a stark contrast to the vibrant annual Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, a well-known spring attraction in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. As the Beachie Creek and Riverside fires raged roughly 25 miles… What Impacts Do the West Coast Wildfires, Smoke Have on Crops?

What’s the big idea? Current industrialized food systems were optimized for a single goal – growing the maximum amount of food for the least amount of money. But when room and supplies are limited – like during space travel – you need to optimize for a different set of goals to meet the needs of… Duckweed is an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food, and great for super salads too!