Food & Farming

California scraps 'sell by' dates — the label most people read as a deadline was never a safety test →

A new California law that took effect July 1 bans consumer-facing 'sell by' dates on packaged food, standardises the rest, and targets a simple, costly confusion: shoppers throwing out good food because they misread a manufacturer's freshness guess as a safety rule.

Bird flu reaches the last continent — and Australia's decades of luck run out →

H5N1 has now been confirmed on every continent on Earth. Australia was the final holdout, protected not by any wall it built but by distance — and this month, carried on migrating birds, the virus finally arrived.

A durian glut is crashing prices in Malaysia — because a whole decade decided to plant at once →

Trees planted ten years ago to chase Chinese demand all matured together, and the flood of fruit has halved prices. It's the oldest trap in farming — the crop you plant today answers a price that won't exist when it's ready.

A French dairy giant sues to kill a food label — because the scorecard now counts against it →

Lactalis is taking Nutri-Score to the EU's top court after the label's formula was rewritten and milk slid down the scale. Plus the EU loosens its gene-editing rules, corn's future quietly hinges on fuel not food, and millions lose food stamps as the safety net shifts to the states.

A "Godzilla-strength" El Niño is forming — and the alarm system that would warn the food world is being switched off →

Forecasters say there is a 63% chance this El Niño reaches "very strong," among the worst since 1950. The last one this size, in 1877, helped kill tens of millions. The difference now is that we can see it coming — if the sensors stay on.

Fertilizer prices are finally falling. The farmer who already bought his won't feel it for a year. →

A tentative U.S.–Iran deal reopened the Strait of Hormuz and fertilizer prices are dropping — but American farmers locked in their costs months ago. Washington is now asking Congress for another $11 billion in aid.

The Supreme Court shields Roundup's maker, and a decade of cancer claims hits a wall →

A 7-2 ruling says a federal pesticide label overrides state failure-to-warn lawsuits — clearing tens of thousands of cases against Monsanto. Plus farm aid, falling fertilizer, and a strong corn crop.

Ecuador's mangroves are being cleared for shrimp ponds — and the people who lose are the ones who never sold anything →

A booming shrimp export trade is eating the coastal forests that fed fishers, sheltered the coast, and stored carbon — none of which had a price. Plus the EU loosens its grip on gene-edited crops, and a "compound shock" threatens Southeast Asia's harvest.

The future of meat keeps inventing itself, then running out of money to build the factory →

A wave of lab-grown and insect-protein startups proved their food works — and then collapsed trying to scale it. Plus the EU loosens its rules on gene-edited crops, and a drought tightens America's corn belt.

A Kansas senator drops a bill to kill California's pork rule, and the question of who gets a vote on farming returns →

A California law on how pigs are housed lands hardest on farmers in states that never voted on it — and the fight over who decides reaches the Senate floor.

A big new study links eight common food preservatives to heart trouble — and the dose is the story →

The week's loudest food-science finding wasn't about a single villain ingredient. It was about how much, how often, and what you can't see on the label.

Bird flu has now reached every continent. Australia spent years getting ready to lose →

H5N1 landed on the one continent that had stayed clear, after a strain killed more than three-quarters of the seal pups on a remote Australian island. The country didn't try to build a wall. It built a plan for the day the wall failed.

A $140 billion chocolate industry still can't pay its farmers a living wage →

Lindt sourced all its cocoa from certified farms this week, even as its own program admits low farmer income is a structural problem. The same gap shows up across the food system — a grocer cuts shelf prices while keeping its margin, dairy and grain growers take the hit. Who sits in the middle decides who keeps the money.

A government wants to redraw the line for 'junk food' — and bran flakes might fall on the wrong side →

The UK is changing the formula that decides what counts as unhealthy. The same box of cereal could cross from 'good for you' to 'junk' without one ingredient changing — and that line is now a battleground.

Grain prices spent months climbing. Then they fell off a cliff in weeks. →

Corn, soybean, and wheat futures peaked in early May and crashed through June — even as the US wheat crop came in the worst in over 50 years. The fall traces back to decisions made when prices were high, harvesting a result that arrives months too late to change.

Brazil's farmers are losing their land to a debt spiral →

Bad farm loans in Brazil quadrupled in two years and farm auctions jumped 30%, as cheap-money planting met high rates, weak prices, and wild weather.

A line was drawn around the ocean's last full fishing grounds. This week it was rubbed out →

Trump reopened three protected Pacific marine monuments to commercial fishing, removing fences that let fish stocks rebuild — while out West, seven states still can't agree how to split a shrinking Colorado River. Two stories about shared resources nobody owns, and what happens when the rules holding them together come off.

Fake meat's reckoning — the boom is over, and the survivors are the ones that got cheap →

A decade of money chased meat made from plants and cells. Now Believer Meats raised $400m and sold its US factory for $50m, Meati collapsed, and the firms still standing have stopped selling virtue and started selling price.

A food that saves starving children works — but it's not reaching them anymore →

A nutrient paste called Plumpy'Nut can pull a malnourished toddler back from the edge in weeks. Senegal built a network to deliver it close to home. US aid cuts gutted the delivery, not the food — and across the country, the shelves are bare.

The fertilizer price spike from the Iran war is quietly unwinding — and dragging crops down with it →

Urea, the world's most common nitrogen fertilizer, has fallen 36% from its April peak, erasing the war's risk premium even though the Strait of Hormuz is still shut.

Wild bees are vanishing — and a Nature study just put a number on what that costs your plate →

A first-of-its-kind study in Nepal measures the human-health bill of disappearing pollinators. Plus: the world's meat habit keeps climbing, fertilizer prices fall back to earth, India tidies the cooking-oil shelf, and AI's thirst lands on drought-hit land.

US wheat is failing while the corn right next to it thrives — same country, same week →

The US winter wheat crop is in its worst shape since 2006, with 46% rated poor or very poor. In the same fields' neighborhood, corn and soybeans are mostly thriving. One number for 'US crops' would hide the split entirely.

China spent 20 years quietly building a second soybean supplier. Now the orders aren't coming →

A trade deal promised $17 billion in farm purchases, but China had already secured 90% of its soybeans from Brazil. The leverage US farmers thought they held had moved years ago.

Cod hits record prices, and Britain won't switch — even when the cheaper fish is just as good →

Atlantic quotas and conflict pushed cod to record highs, so chip shops added cheaper hake and pollock — but customers refuse to order them. Meanwhile grain markets keep sliding ahead of Thursday's big USDA report, and a Swiss startup turns urine into fertiliser to dodge a market the war has made fragile.

The week the lines around your food got redrawn — in committee rooms, not fields →

No harvest made the biggest food news this week. A gene-editing reclassification in Europe, a move in Congress to overrule state animal-welfare laws, and a quietly shuttered local-food program decided more about your plate than the weather did.

A flesh-eating fly crosses into Texas, and the cattle market lurches →

A parasite eradicated in the 1970s turned up in Texas calves this week, rallying cattle prices as grain markets sank, the Iran war squeezed fertilizer, and a UN report tallied 60 years of rising meat.

A flesh-eating pest is back in US cattle, and the beef trade is already moving →

A parasite eradicated 60 years ago turned up in Texas cattle this week, triggering border bans and price moves — one of several shocks, from the Iran war to a nervous corn crop, reshaping what food costs.

Billions bet that bugs were the future of protein — then the math caught up →

The 'future of food' is colliding with the slow, thin-margin reality of actually making food. Insect and lab-grown protein firms are cutting staff and going bankrupt, not because the science failed but because the money was the wrong shape. Plus: an uneven planting season, war reaching the fertilizer, and a quiet fight over how a pig is allowed to live.

The companies that sold you cigarettes are now in your snack aisle →

A public-health journal lays out how tobacco firms took the cigarette playbook — engineer the product to keep you coming back, then manufacture doubt about the harm — straight into ultra-processed food after buying the brands. Plus why a TikTok trend and a war are squeezing pistachios, who decides whether lab-grown meat reaches your plate, and the fragile link a cold snap exploits to wreck a harvest.

Drought, screwworm, and a fertilizer probe: the week the food machine ran out of slack →

Plains wheat is parching, beef hit a record, and Washington is hunting for why fertilizer costs so much — three stories about a food system with no spare room.