Audubon Magazine March-April 2011

The eternal food loop—harvest, prepare, savor, cleanup—has never been healthier, and better tasting, than it is right now.

Red, white—and green—the wine industry is widely embracing chemical-free viticulture that protects both the landscape and farmers while capturing terroir, the true taste of a place.

Personal conservation is great, and the better seafood guides can be helpful, says our Incite columnist, an independent voice for the environment. But fisheries policy must still be changed.

In California’s Central Valley, where a quarter of the food varieties we eat are farmed, a new generation of growers is teaming up with conservationists to make sure that rice and Long-billed Curlews will always mix.

Genetically modified agriculture holds both the promise of drought- and virus-resistant crops and the peril of unraveling the natural food chain. But like it or not, it’s one genie that’s already out of the bottle.