The Food & Environment Reporting Network
The Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) is the first independent, nonprofit news organization that produces award-winning, high-impact investigative and explanatory reporting on food, agriculture, and environmental health through exclusive partnerships with regional and national media outlets.
What should farmers grow in the desert?
As the Colorado River withers, a rubber company tries to persuade Arizona farmers to grow a latex-producing crop that’s adapted to arid conditions.
The water war in Indian Wells Valley
California pistachio farmers are facing off against the U.S. Navy over water rights. The outcome could shape future legal fights as climate change upends the status quo.
Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?
By Stephen R. Miller, Food and Water Reporting Project
Photography by Bill Hatcher
You could almost visit Arizona without noticing it was a farming state. If you flew into Phoenix in an aisle seat, for instance, and spent your...
Praying for rain
The Zuni tribe's homeland is one of the most parched sections of the country. The tribe has already declared three drought emergencies in the last 15 years. Will it survive the next one?
As the Salton Sea shrinks, it leaves behind a toxic reminder of the cost...
Scientists fear that eventually the toxic residue of more than a century of agricultural runoff will be blown into the air — and into the lungs of residents.