All FERN Articles

Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?

By Photography by Bill Hatcher

You could almost visit Arizona without noticing it was a farming state. If you flew into Phoenix in an aisle seat, for instance, and spent your time in the city, you might not see it. But if you happened to drive south beyond the car shops and warehouses, across the sandy flats of mesquite and creosote, over… » Read More

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  • National Geographic
    26 million visitors a month

Food scholarships. Homeless shelters. Emergency loans.

By Photography by Melissa Golden

One of the first lessons Jalyn Wharton learned her freshman year at Kennesaw State University was how to stretch a pizza so it would feed her for a week. It wasn’t the only time she’d had to ration food. When she was in high school, her family became homeless and Wharton would sometimes eat less… » Read More

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  • 1.3 million readers a month
    The Nation

The strange, uncertain fate of Alaska’s biggest wild salmon habitat

By Photography by Nathaniel Wilder

Anna Hoover and I ease up and down in limestone-colored water on a warm, windless afternoon in early July, our backs to the mouth of the Egegik River. She’s distracted, perched in the captain’s seat of her 32-foot drift boat. She glances at her phone, checking the time. The state manages fishing on a tight… » Read More

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  • The Nation
    1.3 MILLION READERS A MONTH

Today’s special: Grilled salmon laced with plastic

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Nearly 50 years ago, scientists studying the North Atlantic Ocean started noticing that tiny fragments of plastic were turning up in their plankton and seaweed samples. The microparticles, they found, absorbed toxic chemicals and were then eaten by flounder, perch, and other fish. Until recently, though, researchers thought these ingested plastics stayed in a creature’s guts and… » Read More

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  • 8 million readers
    Mother Jones

For years, complaints about North Carolina’s hog pollution vanished in state bureaucracy

By Photography by Alex Boerner and Rick Dove

In September 2016, with Tropical Storm Hermine bearing down on North Carolina, Kemp Burdette rented a single-engine plane and flew over Duplin County. Burdette, a riverkeeper with the environmental group Cape Fear River Watch, was worried that some of the local pig farmers might try to drain their manure lagoons before the rains hit, to… » Read More

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Down on the smart farm

By Photography by Nayan Sthankiya

Trevor Scherman is getting more rest these days, thanks to his iPad. Scherman is a farmer who grows wheat, peas, canola and lentils near Battleford, Saskatchewan. Like legions of farmers in both Canada and the United States, he uses precision agriculture technology—cutting-edge tools like drones and satellite imagery—to keep a careful watch on his crops.… » Read More

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Is the U.S. chicken industry cheating its farmers?

By and

The U.S. poultry industry is able to share highly detailed information on farmer pay, leaked documents show, giving companies the potential to collude and suppress prices paid to farmers already struggling to keep themselves afloat on razor thin margins. A report for poultry companies produced by a secretive data-sharing company, reviewed in a joint investigation… » Read More

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  • 152 million unique browsers worldwide
    The Guardian

One man is trying to save the world from climate change by mobilizing an unlikely team: Iowa’s farmers

By Photography by Dennis Chamberlin

In early March, just a week before the Midwest was inundated by catastrophic flooding, a dozen farmers gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in Grinnell, Iowa, for an event billed as a conversation about “Faith, Farmers, and Climate Action.” “How is God calling you to use your farm to improve the world?” asked the evening’s… » Read More

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  • 8 million readers
    Mother Jones

As oceans heat up, the types of seafood we eat will change

By Illustrations by Charlotte Knox

There is no better place to ogle California seafood, in all its bizarre bounty, than the Santa Barbara harbor on a Saturday morning. Vendors line City Pier alongside bobbing boats with names like New Hazard and Fishin’ Mission, their booths thronged by customers speaking a half-dozen languages. The wares at this fishermen’s market are as… » Read More

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    EatingWell
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