Farming, crops, land use and productivity.
A West Sussex estate that replaced unprofitable wheat and dairy operations with free-roaming cattle and returning turtle doves has become a conservation icon, but its model depends on taking land out of production altogether. This piece examines whether nature positive agriculture can scale to farms that still need to grow food.
A single pass of a modern tractor now generates more field data than a decade of paper records once held. This piece traces how precision agriculture's data streams became a genuine ownership dispute, from a 2025 FTC settlement with Deere over right-to-repair to the unresolved question of who profits from a farm's own information.
A DeKalb County, Illinois pilot priced farmland using soil health measurements rather than the comparable-sales method that has governed appraisal since the Dust Bowl. This piece traces the shift toward treating soil organic matter and biological activity as a financial asset, and what that means for how farmland gets valued and financed.
PepsiCo, Cargill, General Mills, and Walmart have all attached specific acreage targets to regenerative agriculture commitments due by 2030. This piece examines the gap between acres enrolled and carbon actually verified, and why measurement, reporting, and verification science has become the real test of whether the movement delivers.
Improved seed genetics have advanced faster than the financial tools smallholder farmers need to actually use them. This piece looks at how access to credit, insurance, and market information, not seed technology alone, determines whether climate-resilient farming reaches the smallholders who need it most.
Land sparing and land sharing represent two competing theories of how to feed a growing population without destroying the ecosystems farming depends on. This piece examines real-world cases attempting to produce more food while restoring nature simultaneously, and whether the two goals can coexist at the scale global agriculture actually needs.
Tropical Race 4, a strain of Panama disease with no cure, is now confirmed on every continent where bananas are commercially grown, exposing how narrow genetic diversity has made global food supply chains dangerously fragile. This piece traces why biodiversity, both in crops and the ecosystems around them, functions as food infrastructure rather than an optional environmental extra.
Commercial pollination has become a fully priced agricultural input, with beekeepers trucking hives across the country to keep almond and fruit crops fertile. This piece examines how pollinator decline is turning a once-free ecological service into a costly, logistically fragile business, and what happens to food production if it keeps eroding.