Topic
Our Impact
FERN Investigates Police Killing of Meatpacking Worker
Officials at a massive pork plant with a history of labor violations called the cops on a disgruntled employee. Why did he end up dead? In "A police killing on the packing line," Ted Genoways recounts the tragic details of …
Peach Farming with Ghosts
In Lisa Morehouse's audio story, "Peach farmer ‘Mas’ Masumoto talks about farming with ghosts," a collaboration with KQED's The California Report, we learn how labor and lessons can present themselves in the soil of grapevines and orchards, and the importance …
California Town Aims to Remove Racist Water Policies
In "Facing the floodwaters in California’s San Joaquin Valley," a collaboration with KQED's The California Report, Teresa Cotsirilos digs into the deep-rooted struggles of the historically Black town of Allensworth. The residents there are trying to overcome a legacy of …
FERN Finds Most Child-Labor Violations in Nation’s Food Sector
For her FERN exclusive story, "The child workers who feed you," Teresa Cotsirilos dug into investigation data from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division and found that more than 75 percent of recent child-labor violations were committed by …
U.S. Policy Traps Migrant Workers in Southern Mexico
In "Our Mango Republic," a collaboration with The Nation, Esther Honig explains how countless people have been trapped in Tapachula, a sprawling Mexican border town where many of the migrants take jobs in agriculture. They are helping to bolster the …
Cell-Cultured Meat Poses Questions About Cancer
In "Lab-grown meat has a P.R. problem," published in collaboration with Bloomberg Businessweek, Joe Fassler explains that although leading scientists agree that cultured meat products won't give you cancer, the industry doesn't have the decades of data to prove it, …
Why California’s Farmworkers are in a Food Crisis
In "Extreme weather means less food for California's farmworkers," published in collaboration with WBUR's Here and Now, Teresa Cotsirilos explains that farmworkers who harvest the nation’s food are paid so little that they can’t always afford to eat. Now extreme …
We Investigate How Feds are Failing to Protect Farmworkers From Heat
In “As heat rises, who will protect farmworkers?,” a FERN exclusive, Bridget Huber, Nancy Averett and Teresa Cotsirilos explain that though heat-related illness and death are a growing problem in U.S. agriculture, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration still hasn't …
We Show How a Regional Network of Farmers Plans to Push out Big Ag
In “The collective future of American agriculture,” published with The Nation, Dean Kuipers describes how pandemic-driven shortages gave fresh relevance to co-ops, hubs and other forms of collective agriculture. And with a trust-buster in the White House and a current …
We Look At Why a Bioenergy Build-Out Is Stirring Controversy in the Chesapeake Bay Region
In “Biogas from America’s favorite meat: pollution solution or a prop for poultry?,” Leanna First-Arai takes us to the top chicken-cultivating county in the United States. On the Delmarva Peninsula — which stretches down the eastern side of the Chesapeake …
A Program That Puts Farmworkers’ Lives on the Line
In “The farmworkers in California’s fire zones,” published with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Teresa Cotsirilos explains that when wildfires forced thousands of Californians to evacuate, a little-known 'ag pass' program let employers keep farmworkers on the job. …
FERN Story Shows Chicken Farmers Protesting Big Poultry
In “Facing a merger and a pay cut, chicken farmers push back,” published with The Capitol Forum, Marcia Brown details how in Mississippi, contract growers risk retaliation by protesting a pay cut they say is tied to the latest Big …
We Capture the Migrant’s Story in California’s Drought
In “Scorched,” published in print and online by Pacific Standard, Lauren Markham recounts the harrowing saga of a young woman and her daughter who make the trek across the U.S. border to flee political unrest in Honduras. They were caught by …
We Dissect Corrupt Relationship Between Corn and Politics in Iowa
“The Trouble with Iowa: Corn, corruption, and the presidential caucuses,” by Richard Manning, was the cover story in the February issue of Harper’s Magazine. That alone is impact, as the venerable magazine has a gravitas that extends beyond its 560,000 monthly …
We Show How Local Food-Delivery Apps Faced Off with Big Tech
In “Big Tech’s food-delivery apps face a grassroots revolt,” published with Mother Jones, Dean Kuipers explains how restaurants got fed up with the exorbitant fees and other aggressive tactics from food-delivery apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats. So they took …
FERN’s Palm-Oil Expose Helps Force World Bank to Fix Policy
“Children Left Vulnerable By World Bank Amid Push For Development,” which was published on The Huffington Post in October 2015, is the latest installment of “Evicted and Abandoned,” a yearlong investigation into the hidden toll of World Bank-financed development projects on the …
FERN Reports From America’s Under-Reported Midwest
Our April 2014 piece for American Prospect, “Plowed Under,” looked at native grassland across America’s Western Corn Belt, which are being plowed under and replaced with row crops at an unprecedented rate. The story reached an audience of 625,000 and had …
FERN Series