By Yusuf Khan WSJ Pro June 23, 2026 1:13 pm ET McCain supplies a quarter of the world’s fries, but extreme weather is making it tougher for farmers to grow the spuds John Bubb grows potatoes for McCain in Shropshire, U.K. Photo: Yusuf Khan McCain had a problem. The family-run company that supplies a quarter of the world’s french fries was facing a potato shortage. When its top agronomists toured its farmers’ fields from Canada to South Africa they found entire crops failing.

By Julia Moskin Reporting from Watsonville, Calif. Published Updated July 8, 2026 The California giant has helped turn a local, seasonal treat into a worldwide refrigerator staple and marketing juggernaut. Hundreds of berry breeds are raised and tested each year at the company’s main test plot in Northern California.Credit...Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times Once upon a time, there was only one way to get your hands on a ripe strawberry in winter: be a member of the Fre

By Artem Milinchuk, Founder & Head of Strategy, FarmTogether, a farmland investment manager Artem Milinchuk, founder and head of strategy, FarmTogether A new documentary is making the rounds. Groundswell — the third chapter in the trilogy that began with Kiss the Ground — premiered at Cannes in May and launched on Amazon Prime on World Environment Day (this past Friday, June 5th). Narrated by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, I found it sweeping, cinematic, and genuinely compel

Groundswell Film Click to watch trailer.

Michael Snyder Jun 07, 2026 Gigantic underground aquifers are being rapidly depleted all over the world, and once that water is gone it will take a very long time for it to come back. In fact, in some areas of the United States the recharge rate is less than an inch per year. That is a major problem, because more than half of the water that U.S. farmers use for irrigation comes from underground aquifers. What in the world are our farmers going to do once that water is gone? T

By Jenny Gross Reporting from Walhain, Belgium Updated June 2, 2026, 3:04 a.m. ET The New York Times Kevin Faingnaert for The New York Times Belgium’s potato harvest set a record, just as tariffs hit U.S. demand for frozen fries and as competition from suppliers in Asia intensified. A thousand tons of potatoes were stacked 15 feet high in a warehouse on Kris D’haeyere’s farm for months. Even though he offered to sell them for just a couple of euros per ton, no one wanted to b

By Owen Tucker-Smith | May 10, 2026 12:00 pm ET The Wall Street Journal A series of economic challenges, from tariffs to stretched consumers, has hit the food industry in the past year. Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Having absorbed various price shocks, firms are less able to avoid passing on additional costs to retailers and consumers HUNTS POINT, N.Y.—Stefanie Katzman’s celery is starting to feel the pinch of $5.66-a-gallon diesel. Her food-distribution company buys

By Trip Gabriel April 19, 2026 The New York Times Elaine Ingham in 2024. She “is largely responsible for the understanding by gardeners and farmers that soil is alive,” a writer said after her death.Credit...Grace Solkinson A scientist and leader in the organic farming movement, she popularized the “soil food web,” an understanding that soil is a complex realm of microorganisms. Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist who got growers to see the earth beneath their feet as a web of li

Iowa Capital Dispatch•By Ken Quinn April 24, 2026 A drone view of Comeback Farms in Fredericksburg, Iowa. REUTERS/File Photo (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) In November 1979, I escorted Gov. Robert D. Ray and first lady Billy Ray to the Thai-Cambodian border, where we witnessed thousands of Cambodians who had escaped the Khmer Rouge genocide starving to death. Victims were dying at the rate of 50 to 100 a day, bulldozed into mass graves. After this trip, Gov. Ray started the Iowa

By Nina Kienle March 27, 2026 6:58 am ET The Wall Street Journal Yara CEO Svein Tore Holsether is confident the steps the company has taken to diversify its energy exposure and ammonia production will help in the current situation. Patricia Monteiro/Bloomberg News The price of urea in Egypt—the regional benchmark—jumped 54% over the past month Farmers are likely to scale back fertilizer purchases amid surging prices, the head of fertilizer maker Yara International said,

By Kevin Draper Published March 21, 2026Updated March 23, 2026 The New York Times Vertical farms, like the one operated by 80 Acres Farms in Florence, Ky., resemble sterile manufacturing facilities.Credit ...Madeleine Hordinski for The New York Times The industry was a darling of the venture capital world 10 years ago. With many farms out of business, the remaining companies have scaled back. Vertical farming businesses blossomed a decade ago, promising an abundant, cleaner

By Kevin Draper March 12, 2026 The New York Times Corn harvesting in Earlham, Iowa, last year. The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is hurting U.S. farmers because the Middle East is crucial to worldwide fertilizer production.Credit ...Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times Even before the war in Iran raised fertilizer and diesel costs, a majority of American farmers said they were “much worse off” or “somewhat worse off” than one year ago, and their biggest concern was the high

March 12, 2026 By Brooks Lamb The New York Times Holly Lynton In the next two decades, the owners of roughly 300 million acres of American farm and ranch land are expected to retire or die. How and to whom this land is transferred will determine the future of rural America and our food system. Much of this land could end up being taken over by the nation’s biggest and wealthiest agricultural operations , which already dominate farming. Other land could be bought up by privat

By Sandee LaMotte Original article from CNN Health Nearly 40% of nonorganic fruits and vegetables grown in California contain traces of pesticides that are also PFAS, or “ forever chemicals,” according to a new investigation. California supplies nearly half of the vegetables and more than three-quarters of the fruits and nuts eaten in the United States. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are called “forever chemicals” because their strong carbon to flu

By Patrick Thomas | Photography by Whitney Curtis for WSJ Feb. 14, 2026 9:00 pm ET MARSHALL, Ill.—Don Guinnip is running out of time. The fifth-generation farmer still wakes early each morning to tend to roughly 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans and 40 cattle. But four decades of grueling work, a bout with prostate cancer and surgery to replace both of his hips with titanium implants have taken their toll. The 74-year-old estimates he can maintain the current workload for a c

By Nicolás Rivero January 1, 2026 The Washington Post Mariangela Hungria won the 2025 World Food Prize for her work on microbes that feed plants nitrogen, allowing farmers to slash fertilizer costs and pollution. Mariangela Hungria has spent four decades researching bacteria that convert nitrogen from the air into a form plants can use, boosting crop yields and reducing the need for expensive and polluting chemical fertilizers. (World Food Prize Foundation) Mariangela Hungri

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. 6:00 a.m. EST December 26, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. Soybeans are harvested on a farm in Warren, Indiana. (Michael Conroy/AP) Red-state farmers continue to struggle under damaging inflation and the fallout of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, especially with China. Mike Phillips has spent the past year reconciling his vote for Donald Trump with the uncertain future of his farm in central Iowa. The 72-year-old has been farming for five decades and till

By Maureen Farrell Dec. 23, 2025 Harvey Schwartz, chief executive of Carlyle, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, had predicted a banner year for the industry.Credit ...Alex Wong/Getty Images As funds deliver mediocre returns and shed investors, the industry is struggling to unload 31,000 investments, an increase over this time last year. Heading into 2025, private equity executives were predicting a new heyday. After several years of high interest rates and a t

By Samantha Pearson | Photography by María Magdalena Arréllaga for WSJ Nov. 5, 2025 2:00 pm ET AUTAZES, Brazil—In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, workers are preparing to dig a vertical shaft as wide as a subway tunnel half a mile down into the ground. It isn’t gold or oil hidden here in a grassy clearing between indigenous lands, but fertilizer—something arguably just as precious to this vast farming nation. As global trade tensions flare, Brazil has replaced a growing

By Carl Zimmer Oct. 17, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET The New York Times Colorful microbial mats, composed of thermophilic microbes, surround a bubbling hot spring in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.Credit ...Jon G. Fuller/VWPics, via Associated Press Hundreds of scientists have joined together to save a group of species from extinction, a group that might not seem like it needs saving: microbes. Microbes need protection for many reasons, researchers say, including the fact that o