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agriculture

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

At Alice and Henry’s farm, it is time to mate the sows. Henry even bought a home pregnancy test for them—it is inserted into the vagina and simply beeps, with maddeningly little explanation, if it judges them to have conceived.

Lisa M. Hamilton

Linux for Lettuce

Agricultural patents already cover everything from “low pungency” onions to “brilliant white” cauliflower, and seed companies are scrambling to claim what territory remains. How one group of plant breeders is fighting to keep seeds as part of the commons.

A Meditation on Roast Chicken

June 30, 2010

Just as a bottle of wine is enhanced by knowledge of its production and provenance, food is enriched by a sustained meditation on the life it once was and a reverence for all the work that brought it to the table.

Eduardo Romero Martín grips a desiccated stalk in his cornfield in Pocoboch, Mexico.

Inheritance of Dust

After his two years of schooling, Eduardo took up the destiny ordained to the people of Pocoboch: growing yucca, squash, tomatoes, chiles, beans, and corn on small plots carved into the jungle. There may not have been much money, but for most of Eduardo’s lifetime, the corn made the town run. And then, simply, it did not.

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