COCOA: A Bittersweet Supply Chain
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…
Why we need to ReWild our environment
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…
Planting crops — and carbon, too
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…
THE SECRET DEAL THAT COCA-COLA HAS WITH THE DEA
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,…
How trillions of microbes affect every stage of our life—from birth to old age
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…
The Social Life of Forests By Ferris Jabr
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…
The State of American Restaurants, by City, November Update
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…
What Impacts Do the West Coast Wildfires, Smoke Have on Crops?
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…
Duckweed is an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food, and great for super salads too!
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 –…
One-Third of U.S. Restaurants Face Permanent Closure This Year By Anita Sharpe and Nic Querolo
A new forecast projects that one in three U.S. restaurants may close permanently this year, showing how the Covid-19 pandemic is decimating an industry that employs millions of Americans. As many as 231,000 of the…