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Hundreds of employees are losing jobs at a grape nursery owned by Wonderful Co., one of the state’s biggest agricultural operations. The company says it is unrelated to a contentious battle by the United Farm Workers to unionize workers at the nursery in Kern County. One of California’s largest agricultural employers plans to close a Central Valley grape nursery by the end of the year after laying off hundreds of employees, including many supportive of a United Farm Workers effort to unionize the workforce. Wonderful Co., owned by billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, plans to shut down the majority of...

Violet, 5, wants to know: what was life like before refrigerators? And Ellinor, 6, asks: how did they make ice in the old times? In this episode, we learn about the history of ice harvesting and the industry that built up around it, where ice cut from lakes in New England was shipped to as far away as India and the Caribbean.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, along with 22 other AGs, sent a letter demanding answers from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) over its Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard. The letter, addressed to SBTi CEO, David Kennedy, demands documents on member commitments, funding sources, and insurer actions tied to the Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard, which may violate the law, and have harmed consumers. Bird posted on social media: “Making net-zero a goal actively harms Americans, creates risk for energy independence, and increases the cost of safe, healthy, nutritious food." ... Specifically, the AGs argue that SBTi's Standards are unlawful and raise...

Farm equipment giant John Deere announced this year it is investing nearly $20 billion over the next decade to bolster its US operations as part of its ongoing commitment to American manufacturing. “We look forward to carrying forward our founder’s legacy of ingenuity as we continue building and investing in America,” Cory Reed, president of Deere & Co.’s worldwide agriculture and turf division for production and precision agriculture in the Americas and Australia, told FOX Business. The company’s $20 billion investment focuses on the development of new products, “cutting-edge” technology and more advanced manufacturing capabilities, Reed said. John Deere is...

Long before bourbon dominated the liquor market, rye whiskey reigned supreme. Now, a Midwestern distiller is teaming up with scientists to bring back a long-gone type of grain and turn it into spicy, bold whiskey. The source is a wooden schooner named the James R. Bentley that's been sitting in Lake Huron for nearly 150 years. The ship sank in Nov. 1878 after striking a shoal.

The modern potato exists thanks to a 9-million-year-old hybrid between tomato-like and potato-like plants. Credit: Shutterstock ========================================================================== Scientists have finally uncovered the ancient secret behind the potato’s origin—and it involves an unexpected genetic romance. About 9 million years ago, a wild interbreeding event occurred between a tomato-like plant and a potato-relative in the Andes. This rare hybridization gave rise to the first tuber-forming plants. Ancient Hybrid Sparked the Potato’s Origins An international team of scientists has discovered that the modern potato originated from a natural crossbreeding event between tomato plants and potato-like wild species in South America around 9 million...

Archaeologists have re-examined a 2500-year-old residue found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum, Italy, previously identified as a wax/fat/resin mixture. Using a multianalytical approach, the authors have detected lipids, saccharide decomposition products, hexose sugars, and major royal jelly proteins supporting the hypothesis that the jars once also contained honey/honeycombs. Paestum honey: (A) underground shrine in Paestum, Italy; (B) one of the hydrias on display alongside a Perspex box containing the residue at the Ashmolean Museum in 2019; (C) graphic representation of the arrangement of the bronze jars inside the shrine; (D) sample from the core of the...

During the Neolithic Revolution, the development of agriculture led to an epic shift in the way human societies lived. As agricultural technology spread out from the Near East, traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles diminished in favor of more sedentary farming communities. This transition was usually accompanied by a dramatic shift in diet. However, according to a statement released by the University of York, this was not necessarily the case in Japan. Agriculture, rice, and millet were introduced to the Japanese islands from the Korean Peninsula around 3,000 years ago. Research conducted by archaeologists from the University of York, the University of Cambridge,...

King Charles FLIPS OUT as Starmer ARRESTS Farmers for ‘Non-Compliance’ Britain ERUPTS! Farmers protesting inheritance tax and property reassessments, protests spreading, mass arrests for "non-compliance," King Charlie outraged and calls Starmer and bawls him out. Two-tier doubles down and makes arrests higgledy piggledy. Grass roots resistance grows and is now called "The Freedom Front". Nigel Farage gaining points, galvanizing the resistance. Protests now in cities, including London... Transcript linked below video

A flurry of mainstream media reports, from Bloomberg, The Guardian, Financial Times, and CNN, among other outlets, claim that climate change is causing rising food prices “worldwide,” based on a single new study. This is false. Bad weather has always impacted crop production, and there is no actual evidence that extreme weather is increasing. Globalization of media coverage is simply making it easier to hear about bad weather elsewhere in the world, meanwhile crop production and yields globally continue to set records – a fact the same media outlets largely ignore. Focusing on the coverage by Bloomberg, in an article...

What does it really mean to have German ancestry? If you’ve taken a DNA test and seen the "Germanic" label, your story is far richer, older, and more dynamic than any single result. Groundbreaking genetic research reveals that Germans descend from a tapestry of Ice Age hunters, early farmers, horse-riding steppe migrants, Celtic warriors, and global travelers. Each left its enduring mark, blending survival, innovation, and migration into the DNA of modern Germans. Why German Genetic Origins is Different | 22:17 Evo Inception | 52.4K subscribers | 47,642 views | July 18, 202500:00 – Introduction: Beyond the "Germanic" Label 00:21...

Would you look at that? Trump's tariffs are having their intended impact for American businesses. At least for now. In Alabama, farmers are showing their gratitude for President Trump's tariffs which are making business boom in the produce world. It's only been two days now and we've actually had a lot more calls of people having interest in doing business and the price hasn't even changed. So, this leveling the playing field with international trade actually ... levels the playing field? A 17% tariff was all it took?? From NBC 13 in Birmingham: Many are concerned this will mean higher...

Amid disastrous green diktats and crippling cuts to farmers’ livelihoods, the out-of-touch elites in Brussels seem to have forgotten where their food comes from. This afternoon, farmers from all over the European Union met outside the European Parliament to march on the Berlaymont, the European Commission’s HQ. Organised by COPA-COGECA, the umbrella body for 22 million European farmers, the demonstration should by all rights be a wake-up call for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The unions will hand over a petition signed by 6,335 organisations, along with a symbolic pair of boots, in protest of the EU’s plans to...

Alcohol may have done more than just fuel celebrations in ancient societies. A study led by Václav Hrnčíř from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology suggests that indigenous fermented drinks helped ancient societies grow in size and complexity. The study, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, draws a link between alcohol and the rise of structured governance. Researchers analyzed data from 186 traditional societies worldwide. They found that communities producing their own alcoholic drinks, like fruit wines or cereal beers, often showed higher levels of political organization. The team focused on societies that existed before industrialization and widespread...

Our study explored the evolutionary trajectory of grapevine cultivation in Italy through the analysis of archaeological grape pips spanning approximately 7,000 years...During the Early Neolithic and Early Bronze Age periods, the absence of morphologically domestic grapes suggests a reliance on wild grape gathering, possibly with some experiment of proto-cultivation of wild grape.Despite previous research showing the presence of domestic grapes in Middle Bronze Age sites such as Pertosa Cave in southern Italy and Sa Osa in Sardinia, our study of grape pips from several other sites do not reveal robust evidence for domestic grapes in Middle Bronze Age sites in...

What makes the Galápagos tomatoes particularly notable is not just that they produce alkaloids, but that they are generating types not seen in modern tomatoes...The team examined more than 30 tomato specimens collected from various locations across the islands. They discovered that tomatoes growing on the eastern islands produced alkaloids similar to those found in today's cultivated varieties. However, tomatoes from the western islands were synthesizing a different form of the molecule—one that matched the chemical profile of ancient eggplant relatives.This distinction is due to stereochemistry, which refers to the spatial arrangement of atoms within a molecule. Two compounds can...

“Farm security is national security,” declared U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins, as she unveiled a sweeping National Farm Security Action Plan at a press conference on July 8, 2025. Flanked by Trump adviser Peter Navarro, several governors, and key Cabinet officials, Rollins rolled out the most aggressive federal effort in decades to curb foreign ownership of U.S. farmland and shield the agricultural sector from national-security threats, particularly those posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).The USDA’s announcement follows a February 2025 directive from President Trump, who ordered the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)...

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins revealed that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is rolling out the National Farm Security Action Plan, which will “promote agricultural prosperity” and “defend the foundations of agriculture” and strengthen the U.S. domestic food supply. During a virtual pen & pad event on Monday evening, ahead of a press conference on Tuesday, Rollins explained that the plan includes “seven key action items.” One of the key action items focused on “securing and protecting the American farmland,” while another key point focused on “rooting out fraud, abuse, and foreign adversaries” that were posing a threat...

A new study published in the journal Science suggests that humans might have played a significant part in the sudden deforestation of rainforests from Central Africa. This work contradicts the prevailing view that the expansion of farming practices was the root cause as well as the increased incidence of long, severe dry spells.Germain Bayon, a geochemist at the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea in Plouzané, and his colleagues examined the weathering of sediment samples that were drawn from the mouth of the Congo River. Deforestation intensifies weathering; therefore the clay samples would provide a continuous record of...

The switch to agricultural rather than hunter-gatherer-based societies is one of the most pivotal moments in the history of humankind. Archaeologists have long thought that this transition may have been influenced by hardships, as communities began relying more heavily on domesticated crops due to increasing population and diminished wild resources. However, according to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, new evidence from Peru's Altiplano region suggests that this was not the case there. Researchers recently examined the diets of 16 individuals buried at the sites of Kaillachuro and Jiskairumoko between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago, during the...