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Environment

California’s Central Valley Is Designing the Future of American Agriculture

Inside a climate-controlled laboratory at the Duarte Nursery outside Modesto, an experiment is taking place that could help determine what food we will eat for decades to come.

Portrait of Berenise, age 17, at her home in Hidalgo County, Texas.

The Young Hands That Feed Us

An estimated 524,000 children work unimaginably long hours in America's grueling agricultural fields, and it's all perfectly legal.

Karen Coates & Valeria Fernández

A field of wheat at sunset.

Environment

A Modernized New Deal Could Revive the American Agriculture Industry

U.S. agriculture needs to make a systemwide shift that cuts carbon emissions, reduces vulnerability to climate chaos and prioritizes economic justice.

Maywa Montenegro, Annie Shattuck & Joshua Sbicca

Various chicken packs at a supermarket

How Common Is Price-Fixing in the Food Industry?

The DOJ intervened in a lawsuit alleging Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Sanderson Farms, Koch Foods, and Pilgrim's Pride conspired to increase chicken prices.

In this aerial view, combines harvest summer wheat at a cooperative farm on August 14th, 2015, near Grossderschau, Germany.

Social Justice

How Anti-Immigration Policies Are Leading Prisons to Lease Convicts as Field Laborers

Under lucrative arrangements, states are increasingly leasing prisoners to harvest food for American consumers at a rate not seen since Jim Crow.

Chickens at a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO)

News in Brief

Missouri Outlaws Rural Residents’ Last Line of Protection Against CAFOs

Under the new law, local standards regulating industrial-scale livestock operations cannot be stricter than any of those set by the state.

The Ramirez family with a Speckled Sussex Chicken named Nora the Explora.

Environment

How to Craft Climate Financing That Helps Minorities and Lower-Income Americans

We can help build a non-extractive economy by offering non-exploitative loans to people of color and the formerly incarcerated.

Farmer Terry Davidson walks through his soy fields on July 6th, 2018, in Harvard, Illinois.

How the Trade War Has Affected American Farmers

In his State of the Union address, Trump is likely to claim that his strategy balanced trade policy. But the state of the trade war indicates otherwise.

Sustainable farming vegetables

Can Sustainable Agriculture Survive Under Capitalism?

Without a drastic change to the system, sustainable agriculture risks becoming an esoteric side note—or simply another way for those with money to live healthier lives than those without.

Environment

Could Pasture-Raised Pork Provide a Sustainable Future for Hog Farming?

North Carolina has acutely felt the downside of a massive, environmentally damaging pork production industry, but a better model may be emerging.