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Farming

Peanuts

The Legumes of War: How Peanuts Fed the Confederacy

Food shortages were a problem for both military and civilians. But even in these hard times, people could find relief in peanuts

A microbiologist collects a manure sample

Mysterious Exploding Foam is Bursting Barns

One explosion raised a barn roof several feet in the air and blew the hog farmer 30 or 40 feet from the door

Nouveau Pac Man Cuisine

Food and Video Games

Video games may be the art medium of the 21st century, but they’re also an advertising medium. Here are five notable games that promoted foods

Laboratory technician injects tomatoes on the "factory farm" of the future (1961)

Super-Sized Food of the Future

How do you eat an eight-foot-long ear of corn?

Fourth-grader Lisa Gilvar's Jetsons-inspired bubble-top homes

1970s Children Draw Robot Presidents and Nuclear Apocalypse

Kids predict the darndest things

Blueberry endocarp

Fruits and Vegetables Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before

Microscopy artist Robert Rock Belliveau says, “I couldn’t believe the things I found on the things we eat every day”

Adam Bernbach making drinks with organic local gin.

Jose Andres and Other Toques of the Town Honor Alice Waters

What do you cook for famed chef Alice Waters? Washington’s culinary celebrities faced this challenge at the unveiling of her portrait at the Smithsonian

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Sunday Funnies Blast Off Into the Space Age

When Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus met President Kennedy in 1962, JFK told him, “The only science I ever learned was from your comic strip.”

“Man does not live by salad alone,” says farmer Tevis Robertson-Goldberg of Massachusetts. “He needs croutons.”

Artisanal Wheat On the Rise

Giving factory flour the heave-ho, small farmers from New England to the Northwest are growing long-forgotten varieties of wheat

Thanksgiving meal in a pill

A Thanksgiving Meal (in-a-pill)

The future of food was envisioned by many prognosticators as entirely meatless and often synthetic

Stuffed cabbage

Five Ways to Eat Cabbage

It’s versatile and found in cuisines throughout the globe. Stuff it, fry it, shred it and more

Though apples are the nation's most popular fruit, they are relatively worthless in Sonoma County, California.

California’s Disappearing Apple Orchards

In Sonoma County, apple growers battle against the wine industry and cheap Chinese imports

Although the potato is now associated with industrial-scale monoculture, the International Potato Center in Peru has preserved almost 5,000 varieties.

How the Potato Changed the World

Brought to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers, the lowly potato gave rise to modern industrial agriculture

How will you be working with pumpkins in your kitchen this fall?

Five Ways to Cook With Pumpkin

It’s time to think outside the pie crust and consider other ways you can put pumpkin on your table

With veggies like these, would you make soup or music?

The Sweet Sound of… Vegetables?

Vienna’s Vegetable Orchestra makes music by thunking on pumpkins and making carrot recorders and cucumberphones

Farming and new media are not mutually exclusive.

The Farmer and the Dell—or the iPhone

New technology is taking the farmer-consumer relationship to another level

Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda, the lady in the tutti-frutti hat

Vogue Vittles: The Cross Between Food and Fashion

Before Lady Gaga’s beef dress, there were Wonder Bread raincoats, waffle pants and Marilyn Monroe in a potato sack

Inspired by recent archaeological research, the people in the Cuzco region of Peru are rebuilding terraces and irrigation systems and reclaiming traditional crops and methods of planting.

Farming Like the Incas

The Incas were masters of their harsh climate, archaeologists are finding—and the ancient civilization has a lot to teach us today

The final product, a hopefully delicious one at that

The Sweet and Sour of Pickling

There is a reason, I discovered, that households of yore required at least one full-time homemaker to keep things running smoothly

What to do with the corn from your local market?

Five Ways to Eat Fresh Corn

Eating it only buttered and salted would be like limiting Ben Franklin to a single pursuit of inquiry. Why squelch such potential greatness?

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