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

By Laura Cooper   The Wall Street Journal Oct. 10, 2025 9:00 pm ET SONOMA, Calif.—The U.S. wine industry hasn’t had it this bad since Prohibition.  The list of problems is long in California, the cradle of American wine. Vineyards have an oversupply of grapes. People are drinking less, especially younger drinkers, and tariffs have caused the biggest foreign market for U.S. wine—Canada—to dry up overnight. With this year’s grape harvest in full swing, way too much wine from p

By  Patrick Thomas  | Graphics by  Stephanie Stamm  and  Elizaveta Galkina Sept. 1, 2025 8:00 am ET Bumper crops and diminished demand...