On Sunday night, my wife and I watched the film "Interstellar", in which the Earth is losing its ability to feed its population due to climate change.  In the first few minutes of the movie, a monster dust storm overtakes the protaganist's farm and coats everything in powdery soil.  On Monday morning, we got our [MORE ...]

Some of the biggest threats to humanity's survival are so tiny that it can be hard to take them seriously -- Covid is a pretty good example.  Thrips are insects that can barely be seen with the naked eye, yet they are the single most costly agricultural pest worldwide.  The average person has no idea [MORE ...]

We just wrapped up harvest of our pistachios -- a bumper crop.  Most years, we irrigate the orchard once afterwards and then wait for it to rain.  We normally finish irrigation of all our permanent crops in October.  Last year, however, when the rain didn't come we continued to irrigate the orchards -- every month, [MORE ...]

Straight lines are a big deal in agriculture.  Everyone has seen the perfectly straight rows of trees in an orchard, or crops in a field.  These straight lines enable hundreds of tasks to be done mechanically, with tractors and equipment, instead by of hand.  For centuries, making perfectly straight lines was a fairly high-level skill.  [MORE ...]