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Eating Green

• As tax dollars dry up, ag schools turn to agribusiness dollars and industry projects December 2, 2021
  Iowa State University had its eye on building its own feed mill. It would be a working operation, a chance to advance research on how to process corn grown across the state into animal feed. It would also double as a teaching center both for students on campus and for pros in the industry. But […]
  Seth Bodine and Katie Peikes, Harvest Public Media
• Climate change forces Washington’s apple cider industry to adjust December 2, 2021
  Something is off with Andrew Byers’ apples.  Byers, a co-owner and head cider-maker of Finnriver Farm & Cidery in Chimacum, a town in Jefferson County, is standing in an apple orchard. It’s mid-September, harvest time, and the Ashmead’s Kernel trees are out of whack.  “I don’t get it,” he says. The trees have their wires crossed, full […]
  Hannah Weinberger/Crosscut
• Antibiotic used in livestock production could cause soil to release more carbon December 2, 2021
  In his speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this November, President Joe Biden gave a special shout-out to soil. The humble compound, he said, could play a mighty role in the U.S. response to the climate crisis. “When I talk to the American people about climate change, I tell them it’s […]
  Jessica Fu
• Where is the water going? November 30, 2021
  Farmers in the heart of California’s agricultural belt – Kings County – sense something is awry with their water supplies. In this intensively farmed, perennially dry county, water is leaving at a concerning rate. “We’ve all seen it,” said walnut farmer Steve Walker. “We haven’t sat down and put dye in the water to watch […]
  Lois Henry and Ryan Christopher Jones
• Why San Antonio Food Bank is building affordable housing November 29, 2021
  Food banks often do more than basic food distribution by offering programs that help people gain a foothold out of poverty. Workforce training, financial literacy classes and access to benefits all fall within this category.  Now, San Antonio Food Bank is expanding even further the definition of what a food bank does. Its construction of […]
  Chris Costanzo
• The ancient potato of the future November 23, 2021
  “Hello everybody,” Bruce Pavlik said to no one. It took me a second to realize that Pavlik, an ecologist at the University of Utah’s Red Butte Garden, was addressing the plants. We were standing above a wide desert canyon just outside Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah; near us was a stand of juniper […]
  James Dinneen
• Despite supply chain issues and skyrocketing costs, food banks are scrambling to serve their communities this Thanksgiving November 23, 2021
  Earlier this month, Sandy Swett wasn’t sure how the Harrison Food Bank could supply Thanksgiving to families in need this year. Swett is the Maine-based organization’s founder and operations manager. On October 21, she learned that the Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Food Assistance Program did not—and could not—deliver her organization’s vegetable allotment, apparently another victim […]
  Matthew Sedacca
• How a federal drought relief program left southern Oregon parched—and contributed to the ongoing groundwater crisis in the West November 23, 2021
  This April, Micah Goettl, an emergency coordinator for the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), began to hear reports of residential wells failing in Klamath County. At first, this wasn’t a complete surprise. The region was experiencing extreme drought. Many farmers in the area were tapping into groundwater reserves after their preferred water sources, Upper […]
  Jessica Fu
• Invasive lake trout have been decimating native fish populations for decades. Residents of the Flathead Reservation in Montana have a solution. November 18, 2021
  Bud Bras and his friends used to fish for bull trout in Montana’s Flathead Lake in the 1950s and 1960s, long before they were designated a protected species. They were a lean, clean-tasting fish that the Bras family liked to bake and pan-fry. Casting from the shore, Bras would almost always go home with a […]
  Lena Beck
• How New Mexico chiles ended up on the space station November 18, 2021
  As the chile season winded down in New Mexico’s Hatch Valley, the harvest continued 250 miles above earth on the International Space Station. In a first for space gardening, an astronaut picked exactly seven mature peppers in late October. On social media, the American crew, along with their international colleagues, celebrated the harvest and shared photos and videos […]
  Wufei Yu/High Country News