By Tim Craig October 4, 2026 The Washington Post Mark Terrell drives a tractor through his vineyard in North East, Pennsylvania. (Matthew Chasney/For The Washington Post) NORTH EAST, Pa. — Mark Terrell knows when it’s time to harvest because the air starts to smell like a freshly opened jar of grape jelly. That’s usually when Terrell drives his harvesting tractor through his 200-acre vineyard on the shores of Lake Erie, shaking millions of concord grapes from the vines to be

Reporting by Julie Wernau | Photography by Zack Wittman for WSJ Sept. 19, 2026 12:26 pm ET After groves were ravaged for decades by a disease, new EPA-approved genetic technologies are giving citrus growers a chance to rebuild Grower Phil Rucks, of Frostproof, Fla., has been forced to diversify since citrus greening hit. FROSTPROOF, Fla.—Scientists may have found the solution to Florida’s orange-production crisis. For 20 years, its orange groves have been ravaged by an incura

By Edward D. Melillo, The Conversation September 15, 2026 Ripple Alan Montag, a third-generation Iowa farmer, plants soybeans on May 6 near West Bend, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) A century ago, Americans barely ate soy. Now it’s everywhere in people’s diets, even in places they don’t look or expect. U.S. farmers will produce a record-breaking harvest of 4.52 billion bushels of soybeans in 2026, according to projections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At 60 pound

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By Jon Emont | Photography by Qilai Shen for WSJ Sept. 14, 2026 9:00 pm ET Blueberries on sale in a market in Kunming, China. California grower’s expansion into China ignited local competition and widespread IP theft; undercover investigators at nurseries QUJING, China—About 15 years ago, executives from U.S. fruit grower Driscoll’s went to China with a goal of turning blueberries into that country’s next big food trend. The California company dispatched one of its experts to

Matt Stoller Sep 07, 2026 on Substack The U.S. cattle industry is in trouble, and Trump’s plan to bring in imports may turn the American burger into mystery meat. Plus, a judge once again rules that Google keeps its monopoly. Lots of news, as usual. Google escaped from an antitrust remedy, as another judge decided not to break up the company after ruling it’s an illegal monopoly. Plus, AI firms are telling ghost stories about the end of the world, the New York Times slimed me

Aug 26, 2026 Video by Alec Opperman and Eric Schuman America’s biggest berry empire doesn’t actually grow berries. A whistleblower alleges the Canadian government repeatedly flagged Driscoll’s berries for exceeding pesticide limits.

Sam Knowlton Jun 21, 2025 A Harbinger of Citrus's Worldwide Crisis Florida's citrus industry, once the crown jewel of American agriculture, has experienced a dramatic decline that serves as a wake up call about the vulnerabilities of industrial monoculture farming. From a peak production of 244 million boxes of oranges in the 1997-98 season, Florida's output has plummeted to a projected 12 million boxes for 2024-25—a 95% decline. This collapse, driven primarily by citrus gree

By Jarrell Dillard The Washington Post The president’s policies are driving up prices for fertilizer, fuel and machinery. Meanwhile, a campaign to deliver emergency farm aid has stalled on Capitol Hill. Alan Montag is shown in May planting soybeans on farmland he leases near West Bend, Iowa. Farmers are facing big spikes in fuel and fertilizer costs. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) For nearly 16 years, Wendy Johnson has tried to build an Iowa farm that could survive the kinds of e

Mark Roberts Aug 12, 2026 How seventy percent of the world’s great aquifers came to be in decline, why Lake Mead hit its all-time record low three days ago, and what happens in Somalia, in Iran, in the Dry Corridor of Guatemala, and in the Imperial Valley of California when the water that grows a family’s food runs out from under them. By USDA photo by Bob Nichols - https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2014/02/11/southern-plains-climate-hub-seeks-address-three-huge-problems, Publi

By Amira McKee Updated July 31, 2026 8:17 pm ET Federal health authorities haven’t linked U.S. produce to cyclospora, but some consumers are still steering clear Some lettuce farmers are choosing to destroy crops despite no evidence of infection. Brent Stirton/Getty Images In the verdant fields of California’s Salinas Valley, Larry Cox is watching his lettuce wilt. Cox and his two sons run Coastline Family Farms, which supplies leafy greens to some of the country’s biggest re

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