The Farmers Abandoning Big Ag to Grow Mushrooms and Herbs

Community-led urban farms in Jakarta empower residents to transform underused city spaces like alleyways and campus grounds into productive local food sources. These initiatives often blend traditional gardening with community organizing, educational outreach, and sometimes smart technology or agricultural research to improve food access, enhance green space, and foster local resilience.

Automated indoor farming harnesses technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate-controlled systems to limit the negative environmental impacts of growing food while maximizing nutrients and yields.

In Paris, building-based agriculture, like rooftop gardens, allows for the production of nutritious food close to where they will be eaten. The practice helps eliminate carbon emissions, improve food security, and improve climate resilience.

Seaweed is emerging as a solution to Maine's shifting climate and economy, providing alternative industries for ocean farmers and also supporting land farmers' climate initiatives. While still in piloting stages, studies have shown up to 50 percent reductions in methane on New England cow farms that incorporate seaweed into feed.

Though not without controversy, electric fences are helping farmers protect their fields and keep out crop-raiding elephants.

Communities in the Sundarbans have adopted shrimp farming as a sustainable livelihood strategy; the approach has proven successful, with environmental benefits and many farmers earning a good income.

Spurred by federal and state incentives, farmers in Massachusetts are adopting agrivoltaics, the practice of installing a solar array on the same land they use for crops and livestock.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition are helping coffee farmers in Malawi adopt agroforestry practices by teaching them new techniques, helping them improve coffee quality, and showing them how to attract international markets. This way, the farmers earn more for their products and benefit the environment with their work.

Farmers are transitioning to precision agriculture to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The practice uses technology like artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, and soil probes to collect and analyze data so farmers know how to manage specific parts of their fields.

Transformation, an initiative aiming to end factory farming, is helping chicken farmers who are in debt and looking to transition out of the industry convert their barns into greenhouses.