The Quinoa Quarrel

One-pill-a-day generic AIDS drugs for poor countries are hard to make because each ingredient is patented by a different pharmaceutical company. The Patent Pool provides a way for companies to donate their intellectual property safely.

The chute is where a river of Silky Pork begins flowing to Tokyo, swift and steady in a logistical marvel that delivers choice cuts of fresh pork across the globe. Negotiations on a new trade deal catch the attention of the Ivey brothers and other North Carolina hog farmers.

Concerned with colony collapse syndrome in honey bees worldwide, scientists, farmers and tech companies teamed up in Australia to create a micro-sensor that collects data on the bee's environment.

By supporting small-scale female farmers, Groundswell International, an NGO, is diversifying diets and combating food insecurity in countries in West Africa.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture assists farms which follow the sustainable farming style, Silvopasture, but few farmers take advantage of the program. ForeverView Farms in Vermont is advising policy groups about ways they can boost this type of farming.

With a global food crisis, farmers look for how to get long-term high yields out of difficult farmland. In Oaxaca, Mexico, farmers farm like a forest, eat low on the food chain, restore damaged land, and have reverence for the planet.

The United States can outsource certain kinds of "microwork," such as accurately digitizing large swaths of information, to developing countries without taking jobs from Americans ― if it’s done carefully, and ethically, as some organizations are working to do. As the author Robert Wright has argued, we no longer live in a zero-sum world, where one person’s, or one country’s gain, must be another’s loss.

Soil in Bangladesh is becoming increasingly saline and infertile due to climate change. Bangladeshi farmers have begun using a saline-tolerant rice seed in order to produce an abundant crop despite salty soil.

University research in Kansas and California is providing technical solutions for small farmers to help them compete against large scale farms.

The demand for food crops is increasing globally while the crop resilience is decreasing due to a warming climate and elevated CO2 levels. Scientists in Washington, DC are testing how to cross food crops with weeds, which have resilience against heat and many other environmental challenges.