Martian soil is nice for rice.
Science News reports on a presentation at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by researcher Abhilash Ramachandran, who found that rice – one of […]
agronomy
Solar panels increase crop yields, insulate reservoirs, and can help farmers.
PNAS reports on some unanticipated consequences of solar farming – but things that banks of solar panels that are unexpectedly good, not bad: To generate […]
Chicken and rice go together – all the way to the origins of domestic fowl in grain fields.
Science News discusses two new studies that place the origins of domestic chickens in one specific place – Southeast Asia – and much more recently […]
Science Art: Yearly Potato Production, from Natural History Magazine, March 1947.
In 1947, Natural History Magazine took a deep dive into potatoes – where they came from and where they’re going … and growing. The story […]
Self-driving tractor ready for remote-control farming.
CNet reports on John Deere’s invention of an autonomous robot tractor you can control with your smartphone: “It takes a while to get comfortable because […]
African farmers use bee hives as elephant-proof fences.
Scientific American looks at scientific Kenyans, who have taken advantage of one of the few things elephants are actually afraid of – stinging honeybees – […]
Wild bees do $1.5 billion-worth of pollinating for six crops alone.
Science News looks beyond the domesticated honeybee for unsung pollination heroes: the bumblebees, mason bees, carpenter bees and other native bees that do an enormous […]
Old coffee is coming back to save the business (and the species tastes great, too)
The Scientist toasts the rediscovery of Coffea stenophylla, a relative of the C. arabica coffee plant our society runs on – that’s proved itself able […]
Substituting soap-bubble robots for pollinating insects.
Cell reveals a potential replacement for pollinators – the vital insects who keep plants from almonds to corn to quinoa reproducing – by using flying […]
Science Art: Genesee County Hogs of the “Swill-Pail Breed,” from Moore’s Rural New-Yorker, March 22, 1862
Click to embiggen Swill-pail hogs from upstate New York, as featured on the front page of Moore’s Rural New-Yorker, a delightful paper that promised “Agriculture, […]
EPA approves a fungicide distributed *by bees*.
Growing Produce has a story that strikes me as super weird, about the first-ever commercial fungicide designed to be carried onto crops by bees: The […]
Chickens with Fitbits. Future of farming.
Digital Trends looks at how wearable devices could revolutionize farming and keep chickens healthier: Sitting neatly between these two size extremes is a new project […]
Climate change is stealing nutrients from food.
Science News has a series of studies that show rising CO2 levels and other climate disturbances are taking minerals and vitamins out of our vegetable […]
GMO wheat is gluten free. (Hard choices, right?)
New Scientist reports with hope for celiac-disease sufferers on a new breed of wheat that’s genetically modified not to produce inflammation-causing gluten: Gluten is the […]
Rising CO2 levels mean we’ll get less protein from our grain crops.
Science Daily has one for the “Yeah. Great.” file – research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health showing that the rising carbon […]