Farmers

Rebecca Isaac, 50, sits on a wooden chair at the entrance of her house as she peels baskets of cassava at Pegi, a community in Kuje Area Council of Abuja. Her husband and their two children stand nearby, waiting to grind and process the pellets. Mrs Isaac gets farm inputs on credit from people, and support from her husband and children. Her efforts to receive government funding and support in the past did not succeed. Despite being in the federal capital, she, like most other women…

Once thought to have originated and spread culturally from a single population in what's now the Middle East, farming drastically changed our world and continues to do so to this day, for both better and worse.  But ancient genomes suggest farming's beginning was far more complicated than a simple spread and adoption of a new culture and technology.The genomes of 15 newly sequenced humans who lived during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene (from around 10,000 to 7,000 years ago) along with 10 previously sequenced…

Farmers are in a race against the clock to get their crops in the ground this week, with planting of corn, soybeans and wheat well behind their usual pace.Wet and cool temperatures in key parts of the Midwest have delayed farmers’ planting plans, leaving them days to get crops in the ground before they start to lose out on a bigger harvest. If they don’t, some grain traders say that already high prices for agricultural commodities could rise even more, with supplies thinning as farmers world-wide grapple with tough…

Startups marketing alternative crop fertilizers said they are gaining traction among U.S. farmers and investors, pitching themselves as a potentially cheaper option as prices for traditional fertilizers surge.Companies such as Pivot Bio, Kula Bio and Anuvia are pushing development of farm fertilizers by harnessing microbes or plant-based products to deliver nutrients that corn and other crops need. They aim to replace traditional fertilizers produced from natural gas or mined underground, prices of which have hit records…