After decades of consolidation, three giant processors control the fate of fishermen in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Now, smaller operations that offer direct-to-consumer sales are changing the calculus. Support for reporting and photography for this story was provided by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

FERN and Offrange

The controversial reopening of Apalachicola Bay will test whether its once-sustainable local food system is still possible. This story was co-published and supported by the journalism nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Civil Eats

Talen Energy wanted 800 acres of Pennsylvania farmland rezoned to develop the center with Amazon. The community fought it.

Civil Eats

Battered by climate change and cultivated competitors, Maine’s wild blueberry growers stare down an existential crisis.

Offrange

As temperatures rise, the threat of a tick-borne meat allergy grows.

Distillations

In building a foundation for the future, tree crop cooperatives are taking a patient approach to agricultural sustainability. It all starts with chestnuts.

Offrange

Artist and activist jackie sumell’s nonprofit, Freedom to Grow, takes a plant-powered approach to encourage radical change.

Civil Eats

As the world’s most ambitious oyster reef restoration nears completion, many millions of tiny mollusks are revitalizing America’s largest estuary.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

A groundbreaking research project has reimagined an entire unit with Scandinavian principles. Could it revolutionize U.S. prisons?

Philadelphia Magazine

Bullied by blight, the filbert has long failed to find a home on farms in the eastern U.S. After decades of research, its arrival is imminent.

Offrange

A champion of agroforestry, J. Russell Smith argued for the restoration of forests as key to sustainable agriculture in his seminal work Tree Crops.

JSTOR Daily

The Double Trellis Food Initiative fights hunger in America’s poorest large city—and gives young people a path to employment.

Civil Eats

Emerging research shows the healing power of the hive for people grappling with stress and trauma.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

Meet the community of people in Philadelphia forging a more dignified path for the dying.

Philadelphia Magazine

A new wave of experimental therapy is enlisting the psychedelic drug to help couples in distress heal.

Nautilus Magazine

Diving’s interwoven history of exploration and exploitation can trap even a decorated naturalist like so many fish in a net.

Distillations Magazine

As festivals celebrate the beloved native fruit, researchers explore its potential as a low-input, high-value crop for small farmers.

Civil Eats

“There’s no place to put it that is not going to be an unbearable, intolerable burden for the people who live near it.”

Environmental Health News

Jagadish Chandra Bose and the contentious search for plant intelligence.

Distillations

How one special sliver of the city is redefining what smart neighborhood development can look like in Philadelphia … and far beyond.

Philly Magazine

The New Lede

Heavier rains are triggering regulatory pauses on harvesting oysters and clams—and putting fishermen out of work.

Inside Climate News

Heavier rainfalls that lead to deadly flash floods. Droughts that spark wildfires. Soaring summertime temperatures. And a federal government content with doing nothing. Think Philadelphia is safe from the worst the planet has to offer? Think again.

Philly Magazine