All FERN Articles

The collective future of American agriculture

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Starting any farm is a crapshoot, but Reginaldo and Amy Haslett-Marroquin went the hard way right from the start. In the fall of 2020, they bought 75 acres south of Minneapolis to expand their chicken-farming operation. Rather than take a guaranteed contract with one of the corporate brands, like Tyson or Pilgrim’s Pride, they’re raising… » Read More

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  • 1.3 MILLION WEBSITE READERS A MONTH 2 MILLION SOCIAL MEDIA USERS REACHED
    The Nation

One Alaska bay is booming with salmon, for now

By Photography by Rafael de la Uz

On a mid-July afternoon, when the tide was starting to come in on the Naknek River, the Bandle family’s commercial fishing nets lay stretched across the beach, waiting for the water to rise. With the fishing crew on break, Sharon Bandle emerged from a tar-paper-sided cabin that serves as kitchen and bunkhouse with a plate… » Read More

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  • The Atlantic
    36 Million Website Visitor a Month
    5 Million Social Users Reached
    1.9 Million Print Readers

Farming boom threatens Biden’s climate and conservation ambitions

By Photography by Gabriel Popkin

On a sunny, sultry summer day, Joe Blastick, a land steward with The Nature Conservancy, scans the hilly pastures north of Clear Lake, South Dakota, and rattles off the names of plants he sees. Silver leaf scurf pea, purple prairie clover, green needle grass, and dozens of others blend into a cacophony of color and… » Read More

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  • 26 MILLION WEBSITE VISITORS A MONTH
    220 MILLION SOCIAL USERS REACHED
    National Geographic

Can fashion help small farmers preserve the Amazon?

By and Photography by Flávia Milhorance

On a rainy March afternoon, Rogério Mendes strides through the dripping vegetation of a tract of virgin Amazonian forest and stops at a tree with scars arranged in neat diagonal rows across its trunk. From his back pocket he produces a wood-handled tool with a blade on one end, called a cabrita, and cuts another diagonal line… » Read More

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  • 6.4 million page views per month
    The New Republic

Can rock dust be a climate fix for agriculture?

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On a hot and humid August day near Geneva, New York, Garrett Boudinot stands in a field of hemp, the green stalks towering a foot or more over his 6-foot, 4-inch frame. Today, the mustached Cornell University research assistant will harvest six acres of the crop, weigh it in red plastic garbage bins, and continue… » Read More

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  • Yale Environment 360
    4 MILLION ONLINE READERS PER YEAR
    200K SOCIAL REACH

Has the American truffle finally broken through?

By Photography by Andrew Kornylak

On a frosty February morning in North Carolina’s Piedmont region, the enterprising trio who has finally broken America’s strange truffle curse walks beneath orderly rows of loblolly pine, trying very hard not to step on the precious nuggets beneath their feet. Nancy Rosborough—the self-described “ghetto kid” from Washington, D.C., whose wobbly start-up, Mycorrhiza Biotech, might just be… » Read More

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  • 3 Million Website Visitors A Month
    1 Million Social Users Reached
    Smithsonian Magazine
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