With the loss of the jury trial, Biden’s plan to address competition in the meat industry appeared to falter. Still, criminal trials were just one part of the strategy. The Department of Justice could still bring civil cases against the poultry processors. Less than three weeks after the bid-rigging trial ended in defeat, the department’s […]
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Ever since we were children, we’ve been fascinated by pastoralism. We both come from families with farming roots but grew up in the city. This enthusiasm brought us to Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where sheep graze over the grassland. In a vast peat bog in this corner of the world, the […]
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But gardening doesn’t just require a plot of land, a bit of water, a beam of sunlight. It also requires very animate ingredients: the insects, like black soldier flies, and microorganisms that keep these ecological systems in working order. A trip to Mars for a long-term stay, then, won’t just involve humans. It will also […]
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The day after the grisly Hamas attack, Mr. Swissa, the strawberry grower, faced a reality: There was no one to do the vital preparation work to ensure his strawberry plants would thrive and be ready for the winter harvest. He decided to scale back production, but he still needed volunteers to save part of his […]
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She does not know why they are fighting in the Holy Land halfway across the world, or even exactly who is fighting. All she wants is her son to come home. In the impoverished northeast of Thailand, past cassava fields and cows dozing in the heat, Watsana Yojampa has her son’s new house almost ready […]
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Wine is made by fermenting grapes or other fruit, although apple and pear wines are distinctive enough to have earned their own categories, cider and perry. But a growing number of producers are blurring the styles, blending grape wines and ciders or fermenting grapes and other fruit together, with remarkable delicious results. Some of these […]
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The sheep came spilling over the hillside, emerging through the low mist where the green earth touched the gray sky, running down into the fields below. They were ready for their big moment. It was Shetland Wool Week, and visitors from around the world — most of them women and nearly all of them knitting […]
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The White House on Wednesday will announce more than $5 billion in funding for agriculture, broadband and clean energy needs in sparsely populated parts of the country as President Biden travels to Minnesota to kick off an administration-wide tour of rural communities. The president’s efforts to focus attention on the domestic economy ahead of next […]
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Democrats once dominated statewide elections for the influential post of agriculture commissioner. Now they’re hoping to win just one. By David W. Chen Photographs by Jon Cherry David W. Chen and Jon Cherry drove more than 800 miles across Kentucky, stopping at farms, diners, a fish fry and a livestock auction, to understand the politics […]
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In response to the Queensland fruit fly outbreak, the Ventura County agricultural commissioner, Korrine Bell, told reporters that California was “facing an agricultural crisis.” She urged residents: “Please, don’t pack a pest.” The Mediterranean fruit fly is among the most undiscerning, and therefore, destructive — it has made its home inside more than 250 kinds […]
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On a sunny October afternoon in the London neighborhood of Bermondsey, a cool breeze surprised me with the winy smell of apples. It brought on a sudden sharp craving for a nice chunk of Cheddar, the fruit and the cheese together being a favorite after-school snack when I was growing up in Connecticut. This was […]
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It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in the Hudson Valley, 70 degrees in October and not a cloud in the sky: perfect weather for apple picking. All over the 175 acres of Barton Orchards, in Poughquag, a town about 20 miles east of Beacon, moms and dads in T-shirts were pulling apple-laden carts down the […]
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Just past the neat vineyards and country houses with their blue shutters and tile roofs, goats munch their way through a field of thigh-high plants more typical to Sudan and India than Southern France. It is late September, and 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius) — unseasonably warm, which is increasingly common and in fact the […]
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Three years apart in age, the brother and sister grew up in a tiny village in eastern Poland, helping out on the family farm and going to church each Sunday under pressure from their parents. Today, the siblings, Monika Zochowska, 38, and her brother, Szymon, 41, are separated by a wide gulf opened by politics […]
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Home buyers, entrepreneurs and public officials are confronting a new reality: If they want to hold off on big purchases or investments until borrowing is less expensive, it’s probably going to be a long wait. Governments are paying more to borrow money for new schools and parks. Developers are struggling to find loans to buy […]
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It was 10 a.m. when the villagers, clutching empty plastic containers, lined up behind the tanker truck of drinking water. A cake shop owner arrived with four big jugs for his pastries. Workers from a retirement home carried two dozen bottles back on wheelchairs for their wards. And a mother of four loaded her trunk […]
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Suleiman Chubado is not entirely clear what caused the price of fertilizer to more than double over the past year, but he is bitterly aware of the consequences. At his farm in northeastern Nigeria, he can no longer afford enough fertilizer, so his corn is stunted and pale, the scraggly plants bending toward the powdery […]
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To owners in the Northeast, the animals can put on quite a show — and do a lot more. WHY WE’RE HERE We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. In Massachusetts, a beloved agricultural fair was the setting for a distinct subculture of animal lovers. By Jennifer A. Kingson Photographs by […]
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The News California has put a water-stressed farming region on notice for having “inadequate” plans to curb its overuse of groundwater, bringing officials closer to directly intervening, for the first time in state history, in the way growers manage their underground water supplies. Regulators said Thursday that they would first hold a public hearing on […]
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Solar developers, environmentalists, farming groups and tribal organizations said on Thursday that they had reached an agreement that could make it easier in the United States to build large solar farms, which have attracted stiff opposition in some places. The agreement seeks to address some thorny land-use and biodiversity issues that often stymie power projects […]
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Scientists have used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to create chickens that have some resistance to avian influenza, according to a new study that was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. The study suggests that genetic engineering could potentially be one tool for reducing the toll of bird flu, a group of […]
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“We’re growing a small business and learning as we go,” said Claire Bowen as she arranged bushels of sweet and charmingly imperfect organic apples on a late-September afternoon. “We hope to cultivate connections between local farms and local tables.” Behind her, rows of brightly hued zinnias and an orchard of 700 apple trees swayed in […]
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“You can taste the climate change.” Frédéric Chaudière, a third-generation winemaker in the French village of Mormoiron, took a sip of white wine and set down his glass. The tastes of centuries-old varieties are being altered by spiking temperatures, scant rainfall, snap frosts and unpredictable bouts of extreme weather. The hellish summer was the latest […]
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With cows grazing in a vast meadow surrounded by wire fencing, and with farmers checking to see how their livestock were faring under a scorching sun, it looked like a classic pastoral scene set on what was surely land dedicated to agriculture. But the cows and the farmers were actually guests in a nature preserve, […]
Read MoreTo protect its flocks and its foie gras from the ravages of bird flu, France has begun a mass vaccination of 64 million ducks. The campaign, which started this week, aims to prevent the spread of a deadly variant of avian influenza that has forced French farmers to cull more than 30 million birds in […]
Read MoreThroughout September, Ia’s phone rings off the hook. “What is it?” she answers. But she already knows. The rest of the year, her customers are satisfied with rice from the store. In autumn, though, people call day and night for the chance to buy the rice that she grows. The Hmong name for it is […]
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The first leg of the 35-mile journey from Ghana’s capital city, Accra, to the Fairafric chocolate factory in Amanase on the N6 highway is a quick ride. But after about 30 minutes, the smoothly paved road devolves into a dirt expanse without lanes. Lumbering trucks, packed commuter minivans, cars and motorcycles crawl along craggy, rutted […]
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Plant breeders, by nature, are patient people. It can take them years or even decades to perfect a new variety of fruit or vegetable that tastes better, grows faster or stays fresh longer. But their work has taken on a new urgency in the face of an increasingly erratic climate. Recent floods left more than […]
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The Punan people of the island of Borneo were once rumored to have tails, so elusive did they seem to their neighbors in the 19th century. Unlike the Indigenous farmers, who lived in long houses, the Punan roamed the island’s northern rainforest in family groups, hunting bearded pigs, harvesting starchy plants and gathering forest products […]
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Hours after the European Union ended a temporary ban on exports of Ukrainian grain and other products to five member nations, three of them — Poland, Hungary and Slovakia — defied the bloc and said they would continue to bar Ukrainian grain from being sold within their borders. As Ukraine, one of the world’s largest […]
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Call it a win for the little species, though all kinds of endangered animals and plants stand to benefit. A sweeping legal settlement approved this week has put the Environmental Protection Agency on a binding path to do something it has barely done before, by its own acknowledgment: Adequately consider the effects on imperiled species […]
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