ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Standing in a warehouse outside downtown Rochester, Jeffrey Medford watered his cannabis crop under industrial lights. He’s among the many growers who’ve transformed the city’s network of defunct factories into sophisticated indoor farms. Mr. Medford, 58, who has grown cannabis for nearly a decade after a career as a carpenter, would typically be […]
Read More
From a distance, it is hard to tell whether the three figures walking the salt playa are human, bird or some other animal. Through binoculars, I see they are pelicans, juveniles, gaunt and emaciated without water or food. In feathered robes, they walk with the focus of fasting monks toward enlightenment or death. This was […]
Read More
“Welcome to dead fish central,” said Graeme McCrabb, a local resident, as he navigated his speedboat through fields of rotting fish carcasses bobbing in the acid-green water of the river that runs through his town. Millions of fish have died in the Darling River near his town, Menindee, in outback New South Wales, their bodies […]
Read More
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will warn on Monday that a warming planet poses severe economic challenges for the United States, which will require the federal government to reassess its spending priorities and how it influences behavior. Administration economists, in an annual report, will say that reassessment should include a new look at the climate-adaptation […]
Read More
HARTFORD, S.D. — For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches. Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist. Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide […]
Read More
MINOH, Japan — Strawberry shortcake. Strawberry mochi. Strawberries à la mode. These may sound like summertime delights. But in Japan, the strawberry crop peaks in wintertime — a chilly season of picture-perfect berries, the most immaculate ones selling for hundreds of dollars apiece to be given as special gifts. Japan’s strawberries come with an environmental […]
Read More
On Thursday, scientists unveiled new data on the possible origins of the Covid-19 pandemic — and put a strange, squat creature squarely in the spotlight. Meet the raccoon dog; it earns its name from its black facial markings, which give the animal a masked appearance and a more-than-passing resemblance to those infamous raiders of urban […]
Read More
For years, China’s thirst for Australian wine seemed insatiable. Chinese drinkers were so passionate about big-bodied red wines from Australia that many vineyards replaced white grapes with darker varieties. Wineries even reverted to using corks — instead of convenient screw tops — because Chinese consumers liked the traditional plug. But then everything unraveled. In April […]
Read More
PAJARO, Calif. — It began as a trickle, seeping through a 74-year-old earthen levee in Northern California, dribs and drabs of the Pajaro River, swollen with rain yet again on Friday night. Then pools bubbled up on beyond the levee walls, spreading toward darkened fields of strawberries and lettuce. Four miles downstream, the farmworker community […]
Read More
The donkey is a key, if increasingly marginalized, character in human history. Once venerated, the animal has been an object of ridicule for so long that the word “asinine” — derived from the Latin asinus, meaning “like an ass or a donkey” — means “stupid.” Donkeys and donkey work are essential to the livelihoods of […]
Read More
While the impact of the law remains unclear, it has buoyed the spirits of some farmworkers. Asuncion Ponce started harvesting grapes along the rolling green hills of the Central Valley in the late 1980s. Through the decades, Mr. Ponce has worked on several farms with U.F.W. contracts. Bosses on those farms, he said, seemed aware […]
Read More
The region is one of Ukraine’s agricultural breadbaskets, famous before the war for its watermelons and tomatoes and as a major producer of grains and sunflower oil. Before Russia invaded, Kherson produced more vegetables by volume than any other Ukrainian region, according to government statistics. A sea corridor, negotiated by the United Nations last year […]
Read More
“They want a lower quality of life,” Mr. Massie replied. “You’re gonna have nothing, and you’re gonna be happy about it, you know?” he said. “That’s their motto.” A changing climate, a changing world Card 1 of 4 Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries […]
Read More
Cases typically involve people exposed to poultry. In the United States, the C.D.C., in partnership with state and local public health departments, is monitoring people who are exposed to H5N1. As of last week, 6,315 people had been monitored; 163 reported symptoms; and one tested positive, according to Dr. Tim Uyeki, the chief medical officer […]
Read More
That genetic gulf led Dr. Posth and his colleagues to argue that the Fournol and Vestonice belonged to two waves that migrated into Europe separately. After they arrived, they lived for several thousand years sharing the Gravettian culture but remaining genetically distinct. “This result is, in my opinion, groundbreaking,” said Anaïs Luiza Vignoles, an archaeologist […]
Read More
“We came as immigrants, we started with nothing,” said Ms. Birrueta, 40, who was born in Mexico. “We bought a place of our own that we thought would be safe for our kids, and then we lost it. We lost everything.” More on U.S. Immigration A New Crackdown: The Biden administration announced a new measure could […]
Read More
BRAWLEY, Calif. — The drought crisis on the Colorado River looms large in California’s Imperial Valley, which produces much of the nation’s lettuce, broccoli and other crops, and now faces water cuts. But those cuts will also be bad news for the environmental and ecological disaster unfolding just to the north, at the shallow, shimmering […]
Read More
ENON VALLEY, Pa. — Even with the trees still barren, Pam Mibuck could picture how the seasons would unfold on the land her uncle bought decades ago: a field of sunflowers in the summer, fresh apples for the horses and pie in the fall, and a tranquil place for her sons to come home to no […]
Read More
As ballroom dancers twirl, and competitive Ping-Pong players swing their paddles in the French town of Croissy-Beaubourg, they are doing so in what some describe as the future of building construction. When the Pierre Chevet Sports Hall opened last year in the tiny municipality on the outskirts of Paris, it was the first commercial project […]
Read More
It sounds like an obvious fix for California’s whipsawing cycles of deluge and drought: Capture the water from downpours so it can be used during dry spells. Pump it out of flood-engorged rivers and spread it in fields or sandy basins, where it can seep into the ground and replenish the region’s huge, badly depleted […]
Read More
When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products. In the biggest loss on record, […]
Read More
The first sows arrived in late September at the hulking, 26-story high-rise towering above a rural village in central China. The female pigs were whisked away dozens at a time in industrial elevators to the higher floors where the hogs would reside from insemination to maturity. This is pig farming in China, where agricultural land […]
Read More
Early last October, the mink on a fur farm in Spain suddenly began to fall ill. They stopped eating and began salivating excessively. They became clumsy, started to experience tremors and developed bloody snouts. At first, experts suspected that the coronavirus might be to blame. It was a reasonable assumption; since the beginning of the […]
Read More
The share of United States farmland owned by Chinese people and companies is small and has not been growing substantially. Chinese owners held about 350,000 acres at the end of 2020, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, and most of the farmland came from the Chinese acquisition of Smithfield Foods in 2013. Canadian […]
Read More
The hog industry hails the gas chambers in which pigs are prepared for slaughter as “animal friendly,” “stress free” and “painless.” That would be a good thing, since on average, four pigs are slaughtered each second in the United States. But a California activist recently sneaked into a slaughterhouse at night and installed spy cams […]
Read More
STOCKENBOI, Austria — Sandro Huter was determined to defend his bees, which were facing a looming death sentence. A beekeeper in the forested Austrian state of Carinthia, Mr. Huter was proud of his colonies. His insects were industrious, healthy and so docile that he told the visiting state bee inspector there was no need to […]
Read More
Prices have risen for just about everything over the past couple of years. But anyone shopping for groceries recently has probably noticed the cost of one item in particular: eggs. Buying eggs has become very expensive. In December 2022, the average price of a dozen eggs in the U.S. was $4.25, more than twice what […]
Read MoreWhich shortage came first: the chicks or the eggs? Spooked by a huge spike in egg prices, some consumers are taking steps to secure their own future supply. Demand for chicks that will grow into egg-laying chickens — which jumped at the onset of the global pandemic in 2020 — is rapid again as the […]
Read More