Share this This Story’s Impact 10.8 million subscribers across platforms The New York Times This article was produced in collaboration with The New York Times. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact info@thefern.org. On Aug. 22, hours before Vice President… » Read More ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 51 million monthly content views Eater This article was produced in collaboration with Eater. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact info@thefern.org. If you stop at a roadside restaurant anywhere between North Dakota and Oklahoma,… » Read More ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 10.8 million subscribers across platforms The New York Times This article was produced in collaboration with The New York Times. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact info@thefern.org. As Tim Walz took the stage at… » Read More ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 10.8 million subscribers across platforms The New York Times This article on which this Q&A is based was produced in collaboration with The New York Times. It will be available on thefern.org later this month. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in… » Read More ..read more

Share this We live on a planet where people still die of starvation, and yet we continue to waste so much food. It’s a problem, for sustenance but also for the environment. You may not be aware of it, but a  huge amount of that waste comes from the grocery stores and supermarkets we shop… » Read More ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 6.4 million pageviews per month The New Republic This article was produced in collaboration with The New Republic. It may not be reproduced without express permission from FERN. If you are interested in republishing or reposting this article, please contact info@thefern.org. In early July, a dairy farm worker in Colorado… » Read More ..read more

Share this This Story’s Impact 6.4 million pageviews per month The New Republic In early February 2022, Tom Van Lent sent a note to his employers: He intended to resign from The Everglades Foundation at the end of the month. He adopted a conciliatory tone—“my career at the Foundation has been a source of personal pride,” he wrote—but everyone knew that Van Lent, one of the most prominent scientists in Everglades restoration, had been unhappy for years. The Everglades Foundation is an exemplar of a certain strain of nonprofit: well-connected and well-funded, bankrolled by a hedge fu ..read more

Share this After moving around with the US Air Force as newlyweds, Elaine and Jerry Howard returned home and bought a half acre of countryside in Sampson County, North Carolina. It was 1984, and they were in their twenties. Elaine liked the seclusion of the private road they shared with a few neighbors. Jerry liked being able to walk to his mother’s house. They hauled a 1966 Commodore mobile home onto the property, and Jerry added a porch and two bedrooms for their children. On summer afternoons, they invited family and friends over for cookouts. Parked cars stretched to their back pro ..read more

Share this Consider the apple. America’s most iconic fruit is a crucial component of our culture (American as apple pie!), diet, and economy. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the apple ranks as America’s favorite fruit. Last year, the United States produced some 4.36 million metric tons of apples, the fourth largest producer of the fruit behind China, the EU, and Turkey. By one recent USDA estimate, every American eats about 26 pounds of apples a year. In other words, the apple is, by so many measures, America’s national fruit. And as such, the way we sell, eat ..read more

Share this An estimated 30 percent of produce in America never makes it off the farm. That means that for every two heads of iceberg lettuce shipped to a grocery store, one is left to rot. Likewise, for every two bunches of spinach or celery, for every two ears of sweet corn, for every pair of tomatoes, one is allowed to sit unharvested. In the race to reduce such food waste, some farmers are turning to technologies to conserve resources and cut losses before produce even leaves the farm. They are using composting systems and anaerobic digesters to turn waste into fertilizer for the ne ..read more