International Reporting

How did Europe avoid the Covid-19 catastrophe ravaging U.S. meatpacking plants?

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BERGERAC, France — In late April, around the time that President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring U.S. meatpacking plants to be “critical infrastructure” in an effort to keep them open after they emerged as coronavirus hotspots, Germany’s slaughterhouses reported their first cases of the virus. In the ensuing weeks, as the number of… » Read More

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Feeding refugees on the U.S.-Mexico border was always a challenge. Now there’s Covid-19. 

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Since 2019, a crisis has been unfolding directly across the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville, Texas. About 2,000 refugees, largely from Central America, have been stranded in a riverside encampment, wholly dependent on humanitarian groups for food and other basic needs. Feeding them before Covid-19 was a daunting task for the aid groups. The pandemic has… » Read More

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Who should profit from Mexico’s nitrogen-fixing corn?

By Photography by Citlali Fabian

In a 1979 visit to Totontepec, a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico, naturalist Thomas Boone Hallberg marveled at the local maize. The plants grew nearly 20 feet high in nutrient-poor soil, even though local farmers did not apply any fertilizer. The maize had aerial roots that grew a mucous-like gel just before harvest season. It… » Read More

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Fifty years later, a daunting cleanup of Vietnam’s toxic legacy

By Photography by Cuong Tran and George Black

In the thriving industrial city of Bien Hoa, about 20 miles east of Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, there is a large air base, just beyond a sweeping bend in the Dong Nai River. During the American war in Vietnam, it was said to be the busiest airport in the world. Since the… » Read More

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Toronto restaurant fights food waste by chopping menu prices till all the dishes are gone

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It’s 3:51 p.m., and Chef Ashley MacNeil is busy planning how to run out of food. Sunday brunch service has ended at Toronto’s Farmhouse Tavern, and she has already cubed and deep-fried the morning’s excess biscuits into croutons to adorn tonight’s house salad. Now she’s fretting over an excess of shaved Brussels sprouts, which aren’t… » Read More

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Sea cucumbers are being eaten to death

By Photography by William Daniels

Two Moroccan divers stood on the rocks an hour before sunrise facing the gray Atlantic. Their wet suits were torn and patched, their flippers held together with tape. Unable to afford proper diving belts, the men wore thick bands of rubber strung with lead weights. Each carried a large black inner tube for floating out… » Read More

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‘Every Day You Become More Desperate’

By Photography by Frederick Meza

José Ramón Campos López, a 40-year-old farmer from San Carlos Lempa, El Salvador, stares out at his two acres of land. It’s August, harvest time. The field should be full of tall, vibrant corn stalks. Instead, it’s full of weeds, but for a small patch of corn on the edge of the plot that managed… » Read More

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