Biodiversity

Can grazing save endangered grasslands?

By Photography by Leon Werdinger

On the last weekend in May, in the northeast corner of Oregon, there is a traffic jam of weathered pickups and horse trailers on the Zumwalt Road. Redwing blackbirds trill over the bellowing of hundreds of Angus-cross cattle clustered by corrals, the sign of a spring branding in progress. Half a dozen cowgirls and cowboys… » Read More

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Is carbon farming a climate boon, or boondoggle?

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Trey Hill led a small group of fellow farmers to a field outside his office in Rock Hall on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a cloudy February day, but the ground was alive with color — purple and red turnip tops mixing exuberantly with green rye, vetch and clover, and beneath it all, rich brown… » Read More

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Are we handling the bee crisis all wrong?

By Photography by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

On a crisp June morning at Knoll Farm, high above Vermont’s Mad River Valley, Charlie Nicholson stalked a bumblebee. He tiptoed behind the bee as it buzzed along a row of blueberry bushes, carrying a net that resembled a lacrosse stick. “The trick is to catch the bee without smashing the bush,” he said. “When… » Read More

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An unhealthy alliance between almonds and honeybees

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In January, with the almond bloom in California’s orchards a month away, beekeepers across the country were fretting over their hives. A lot of their bees were dead, or sick. Beekeepers reported losing as much as half their hives over the winter.  Jack Brumley, a California beekeeper, said he’d heard of people losing 80 percent… » Read More

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Where corn is king, the stirrings of a renaissance in small grains

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To the untrained eye, Jeremy Gustafson’s 1,600-acre farm looks like all the others spread out across Iowa. Gazing at his conventional corn and soybean fields during a visit in June, I was hard-pressed to say where his neighbor’s tightly planted row crops ended and Gustafson’s began. But what distinguished this vast farm in Boone, Iowa,… » Read More

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How a wild berry is helping to protect China’s Giant Pandas and its countryside

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In the cool mountains of the Upper Yangtze region, Chinese villagers clamber up dogwood and maple trees to gather what Dr. Oz has called a “miracle anti-aging pill.” The small, red schisandra berry has a peculiar taste — five tastes, in fact, because it’s considered to be at once sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent.… » Read More

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‘Restoration economy’ strives to protect pollinators, create jobs

By Photography by Bill Hatcher

Gary Nabhan and I are bumping along in a rental car down a two-track dirt road that follows the edge of Sonoita Creek’s floodplain, some 29 kilometers north of the Arizona–Mexico border. Nabhan—an ethnobiologist, conservation biologist and agroecologist at the University of Arizona and author of more than 30 books on food, farming and nature—tells… » Read More

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