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Agriculture

Trending Today

People Really Need to Stop Bringing Giant African Land Snails Into the US

Sixty-seven baseball-sized giant African land snails were confiscated at the Los Angeles International Airport

New Research

The Ongoing Drought Will Cost California $2.2 Billion and 17,000 Jobs

California is facing its greatest water loss on record, and it’s not likely to get better any time soon

Adult Common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) with gathered insect prey. This is one of the fifteen species shown to be affected by elevated imidacloprid concentrations in surface water in the Netherlands.

New Research

Popular Pesticides Linked to Drops in Bird Populations

This is the latest in a string of studies suggesting that some pesticides impact birds as well as pollinators

Male and female parasitic worms of the genus Schistosoma

New Research

Mesopotamian Irrigation May Have Helped Out a Parasite That Now Infects 200 Million People

A parasite egg found in a grave in the Middle East gives scientists a window into how disease spread in prehistory

Cool Finds

Goats Evicted In Detroit

An attempt at urban farming runs afoul of city ordinances in Detroit

New Research

Europe Was Probably Colonized By Island Hoppers

New genetic research shows that people and agriculture likely spread across the Mediterranean by going from island to island

Moo-ve over mosquitos, your next bug spray may be cow cologne

Cool Finds

This Cologne Makes Cows Smell Like Humans, So Mosquitos Bite Them Instead of Us

California company receives Gates Foundation grant to explore a unique kind of pest control

Cool Finds

Americans Are Serving Alpaca for Dinner

The llama-like animal is growing in popularity for meat eaters in the U.S.

Camel statues mark the Desert of Maine, which is actually not a true desert.

The Science of a Tourist Trap: What’s This Desert Doing in Maine?

Maine’s “most famous natural phenomenon” is also a reminder about responsible land use

Hundreds of chickens share a huge pen at a sovkhoz chicken production factory in Rudomino. Sovkhozy were state-owned farms that paid workers for their labor in the former Soviet Union. Location: Rudomino, Lithuania

Cool Finds

A Professor Proposes Creating the Matrix for Factory-Farmed Chickens

He wants to give them the Virtual Free Range™ experience

New Research

The American Tobacco Industry’s Child Labor Problem

Children as young as 12 work America’s tobacco fields

Cool Finds

Fujitsu is Growing the Most Technologically Advanced Lettuce Ever

This gives a whole new meaning to factory farm

Cool Finds

This Farmer Grew Four Times As Much Rice in the Same Amount of Land

His controversial farming method has long been dismissed by experts

Bees from a single species aren't as effective in pollinating as bees from a diversity of species, a new study shows.

New Research

A Diversity of Bees Is Good for Farming—And Farmers’ Wallets

A new study shows that if more species of bees are available to pollinate blueberry flowers, blueberries get fatter

Cool Finds

To Save the Apples We Love Today, We Need to Save Their Ancient Ancestors

Apples aren’t set to cope with our changing world. To help them, first we’ll need to protect the past

Around three billion people worldwide depend on rice for their diet. But a new study finds that rice and other crops grown under high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide results in lower levels of some nutrients.

New Research

More Carbon Dioxide in the Air Makes Some Crops Less Nutritious

Crops such as rice and wheat have lower concentrations of some nutrients when they’re grown under an atmosphere with higher levels of the greenhouse gas

Cool Finds

Maple Syrup Farmers Can Now Vacuum Sap Out of Trees

A new technology helps sugarmakers get every last drop

Trending Today

Marijuana Grow Ops Are Drying Out California’s Water Supply

Illegal marijuana grow ops use thousands of gallons of water a day

Organic chicken feed.

Trending Today

Walmart’s About to Do for Organic Food What It Did for Every Other Consumer Product

Walmart’s going to give organic food a big push

The Midwest aglow with a visualization of photosynthetic fluorescence.

New Research

Under the Summer Sun, the Corn Belt Is the Most Biologically Productive Place on Earth

During the peak growing season, the corn belt outproduces the Amazon

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