food

Schools Say Ciao To Plastic Lunch Trays, Hello To Compostable Plates

6:48am June 06, 2015

by Maanvi Singh

Six of the nation's largest school districts are ditching polystyrene lunch trays in favor of compostable plates. The hope is that they'll incentivize cities to build more composting facilities.

Wal-Mart employee Dayngel Fernandez stocks shelves in the produce department of a Miami store in February. Activists say the company's recent corporate policy changes don't address systemic labor and environmental problems.

Why Wal-Mart's Labor Issues Run Deeper Than Too Much Justin Bieber

5:06pm June 05, 2015

by Eliza Barclay

Wal-Mart has said it will turn up the heat and turn down the Justin Bieber music at stores to appease employees. But it's not addressing the most glaring problems in its supply chain, activists say.

Kanzi the bonobo (a species closely related to chimps) holds a pan of vegetables he cooked at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, November 2011. Kanzi was taught to cook. However, a new study is the first to show that animals can acquire a cooking-li

Science

Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They'll Learn To Cook

9:22am June 05, 2015

by Jon Hamilton

That's what researchers found when they gave chimps a device that appeared to work like an oven. The findings add to the argument that our ancestors began cooking soon after learning to control fire.

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Nestlé's Maggi instant noodles gained popularity in India as the snack of the middle class in the 1980s.

India Orders Nestlé To Stop Selling Some Noodle Soup Products

9:19am June 05, 2015

by Eyder Peralta

India's Food Safety and Standards Authority said that the soups were "unsafe and hazardous for human consumption." Nestlé said the products had not been tested properly.

Rudy Mussi's family has farmed in the Sacramento Delta region for nearly a century. Mussi worries that more water transfers will deplete the fragile Delta ecosystem and wipe out family farms like his.

California's War Over Water Has Farmer Fighting Farmer

8:50pm June 04, 2015

by Kirk Siegler

Drought-stricken Central Valley farmers are pointing fingers at the Sacramento Delta, where water still flows reliably. There's more pressure than ever to change a long-standing water rights system.

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A farmer in southwest Bangladesh holds ripe rice that can grow in saline water.

World News

Climate Change-Ready Rice Keeps Farmers' Fields Fertile

11:20am June 04, 2015

by Amy Yee

Climate change has made some soil in Bangladesh more salty, so many farmers have had to leave fields fallow. But what if there were rice varieties that could naturally tolerate the salty conditions?

A row of newly planted organic tomatoes on April 23, 2015 in Firebaugh, Calif. Some farmers are moving tomato production to the north of the state where water supplies are better.

National

Drought May Cost California's Farmers Almost $3 Billion In 2015

7:52am June 04, 2015

by Sam Sanders

The state's farmers could also be out more than 18,000 jobs, with 564,000 acres fallowed by the end of 2015, researchers at UC Davis write in a new report.

National

California Avocado Farmers Boost Yields With New Growing Method

12:51am June 04, 2015

by Lesley McClurg

Farmers are being widely criticized during the California drought because agriculture uses the majority of the state's water. But some avocado farmers are cutting back by employing new techniques.

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Jim Cheatham, a biologist with the National Park Service, studies the ways nitrogen in the air has been disrupting the ecological balance of Rocky Mountain National Park.

It's Raining Nitrogen In A Colorado Park. Farmers Can Help Make It Stop

12:36am June 04, 2015

by Luke Runyon and Stephanie Paige Ogburn

Scientists say too much airborne nitrogen from farms is throwing off the ecological balance of Rocky Mountain National Park. So the federal government is hoping weather alerts for farmers will help.

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Prices for wholesale eggs doubled in May, while prices for shell eggs in grocery stores have also risen.

Avian Flu Outbreak Has U.S. Bakers Begging For Europe's Eggs

4:59pm June 03, 2015

by Peggy Lowe

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will allow pasteurized egg imports from the Netherlands to alleviate dwindling supplies and higher prices from the ongoing outbreak on U.S. poultry farms.