California’s chief snow surveyor ventured into the Sierras this week to see how much water the state can expect from the spring melt—and he came back with very bad news. The devastating drought that the state’s been dealing with the past few months will continue to devastate for the foreseeable future.
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A lime shortage is threatening the U.S. food and beverage industry, with some bars and restaurants jacking up drink prices, charging extra for a slice—or refusing to serve the citrus at all. But there’s another reason to rethink that margarita: The pricey limes you’re buying from Mexico might be supporting drug violence.
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Remember learning about America’s "amber waves of grain?" Well, it turns out that the United States’ bread basket—a.k.a., the Corn Belt—is even more productive than previously thought. In fact, during its growing season, it’s the most productive land on Earth, according to new NASA data.
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California grows a mind-boggling amount of the nation’s produce: 99 percent of artichokes, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, and on and on. That’s why the record-breaking drought (yes, it’s finally raining—no, it won’t help much!) can affect your grocery bill, even if you live nowhere near California. But with almonds—the state’s most lucrative agricultural export—the effect could reverberate for years.
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You have never seen a menhaden, but you have eaten one. Although no one sits down to a plate of these silvery, bug-eyed, foot-long fish at a seafood restaurant, menhaden travel through the human food chain mostly undetected in the bodies of other species, hidden in salmon, pork, onions, and many other foods.
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In the days before Home Depot paint departments, people slathered color onto their walls the old fashioned way: using a mixture of pigment, lime, and milk. Now, one Northern California farm is reviving this ancient tradition with the help of its resident goat herds.
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To grow mushrooms is to let things rot, so something’s a lot of things are rotten in the state of Pennsylvania.
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Among the things I found mortifying about my parents when I was a teenager was their habit of leaving buckets of pee in the bathroom. Instead of flushing all that phosphorous- and nitrogen-rich urine down the toilet, they saved it for our backyard vegetable garden. Pee as fertilizer has since—contrary to everything my teenage self wanted to believe—become a hip idea among some eco-minded backyard farmers.
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What does radioactive salad taste like? How about rice sprinkled with nuclear fallout? Well, if you’re truly curious, consider taking your next vacation in Fukushima, where some intrepid farmers have begun the daunting task of farming the region’s tainted soil.
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