Composting’s Colonial Roots and Microbial Offshoots
Current methods of composting came out of colonial plantation agriculture, but have become a key way of practicing polyculture and imagining multispecies communities.
Category: Essays
Making a Living with Salt in Divya Victor’s Kith
A poetic and visceral narrative of salt mining in Gujarat, India, Divya Victor’s Kith calls attention to the lives and deaths of salt farmers.
How Climate Refugees Are Shaping Movements and Walls
The plight of climate refugees has become a popular rallying cry for climate change activism. But it is also leading to harsher, militarized borders.
Fugitive Seeds
Christian Brooks Keeve traces how fugitive seeds and seed stories are deeply entangled with the stories and legacies of the Black diaspora.
Can Small-Scale Farming Save Oil Palm?
Drawing from her fieldwork with small-scale oil palm growers and plantation workers in Colombia, Angela Serrano describes a smaller way to farm oil palm.
Weaponizing the Desert at the U.S.–Mexico Border
Border fencing straddles the Sonoran Desert and other harsh environments. Kevin Cooney shows how infrastructure gaps are key to U.S. immigration policy.
OK, Doomers! The Climate Generation Has Arrived
The climate generation is coming of age. Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, explains what older generations have to learn.
John Wesley Powell’s Settler-Colonial Vision for the West
John Wesley Powell is celebrated for his proposed land use reforms in the American West. But his vision did not include Indigenous peoples.
Organic Farming’s Political History
Organic farming has far-right roots. While the movement has grown beyond those, its history shows why we must examine our theories of social change.
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Darkness is vanishing, and that’s a problem. Historian Kenneth Weisbrode and poet Heather H. Yeung explain how and why we seek out the dark.
