Conscious Consumption

The potato is the world’s third largest food source, behind rice and wheat, and a staple for more than a billion people. And Peru’s International Potato Center is working hard to make sure that potatoes stay with us.

Old and simple things are increasingly cool again, enjoying new, widespread appreciation — including the longbow.

Farmers and investors wait to see how the ultra-fertile fields of the Ukraine will ride out the ongoing political crisis.

Before wheat farmers can turn their crop into your morning piece of toast, they need to get it milled. And some say the milling industry is about to become way too consolidated for comfort — which could lead to you paying a lot more for that toast.

Everyone seems to think that Monsanto is the face of evil. But why?

It’s hard to believe, but seed planting hasn’t changed much in the last century. But as John Deere and Monsanto move big into precision farming, high-tech solutions may be shaking all that up.

Phosphate mining for fertilizer gave the tiny nation of Nauru the highest GDP per capita in the ’70s. But with phosphate tapped out, an economy on the rocks and a population addicted to imported fast food, can the tiny nation learn to grow again?

In a study published in the journal Ecosphere, a team at the University of Guelph in Ontario discovered bees making their homes out of bits of plastic waste.

From Egypt to Ecuador, Bhutan to the Bayou, there’s no food more universal than rice. So in New York City – home to 3 million foreign-born residents – what crop would you use to educate kids about agriculture?