Amy Mayer

Wearing a hard hat and safety glasses, Brown University graduate student Bryce Mitsunaga pulls nitrile gloves onto his hands, picks up a plastic bin of tools and positions himself at the end of a series of metal workstations. Moments later, a team of technicians carries a 30-foot-long plastic tube full of mud and sets it in a rack that runs the length of the catwalk where Mitsunaga bounces a bit with anticipation. He quickly takes a small plug of mud, which was just pulled up from deep beneath the seafloor.

Many animals that once roamed the Bay Area are gone, but wolves, grizzly bears, antelope and even jaguars once lived here. Over the past several centuries, humans have altered the landscape and influenced the environment in some big ways.

The ubiquity of boba drink shops in the Bay Area did not discourage Willy and Chelsea Tatola from pursuing their dream of opening one. Instead, it challenged the husband-and-wife team to offer something new and different. “We tried to come up with a unique name that, once you came to our shop, you would never forget,” Willy Tatola says. The result is Kiss My Boba, which launched as a food truck more than four years ago and opened a storefront in October 2021.

But it was expensive to hire a teacher, and Crouse’s family couldn’t afford to help support her education. Crouse, who grew up in a lower-income, single-parent home, needed financial security, and wasn’t sure her love of music would translate into a true career. Still, after college, graduate school, and a divorce, Crouse's daughter encouraged her to return to music. She discovered that her bold, brassy voice was perfect for singing blues, and released her first album, “Never Too Soon,” in 2018

Martin Trinh practically bounces along the dock at the Coyote Point Yacht Club on a breezy, sunny spring morning. He’s carrying a case full of instruments and scopes out an open slip at the end of the pier. Soon he’s lowering a probe into the water, alongside kelp clinging to the underside of the dock. Another trip back to his Prius, still sporting South Carolina license plates, and he’s got a white plastic dish pan and a scrub brush. He fills and rinses a brown plastic bottle several times before finally capping it while full and placing it into a zip-top plastic bag. Then he lies on his belly, reaches into the water, and with blue nitrile gloves feels amidst the kelp for the last thing he needs here today: five medium-size mussels.

A partnership aimed at helping farmers and ranchers transition to an electric vehicle future has taken another step as an agribusiness announced plans to purchase 10 electric pickup trucks for use serving agricultural customers in California. Wilbur Ellis - an international marketer, distributor and manufacturer of agricultural products, animal nutrients, and specialty chemicals and ingredients - has a global commercial fleet of 2,800 vehicles. CEO John Buckley says beginning the transition to electric in California makes sense because of the state’s incentives and its leadership on electrification. He joined a Ford Pro event showcasing the new electric F-150 pickup truck at Dutton Ranch in Sebastopol last week.

Olivia Watkins’ family has owned land in North Carolina since the 1890s. Since her grandmother recently passed away, Watkins has become the responsible party for the forested acres. She has an MBA from North Carolina State University and her mother is an attorney. She recognizes these are privileges that not all Black farmland owners enjoy. “We were able to successfully retain our land without it getting caught up in heirs property loopholes and things like that,” she said, referring to property with unclear title, which can prevent the landowner from being eligible for loans and can inhibit succession planning. Even so, Watkins has not enrolled in any federal programs, even when she started an agroforestry business growing mushrooms.

Hemp supporters are touting the crop's myriad uses and soil-nurturing properties while pushing some ideas for increasing its viability as Congress prepares to update the 2018 farm bill that legalized the crop. In 2021, the nation’s total hemp production reached $824 million in value across 54,200 open acres and 15.6 million covered square feet, according to USDA, just three years after the 2018 farm bill fully allowed for its cultivation. During that time, farmers have experimented with the crop across the country.

Recent attention to the country’s meatpacking plants has illustrated that when the four dominant companies face disruptions to processing, smaller, independent operations don’t have adequate capacity to pick up the slack. That’s part of the reason the federal government has decided to invest in upgrades to some of those local shops. Plus, when those smaller businesses are federally inspected, producers will be able to market their own branded meat products across state lines. Still, it will be a tall order to compete in the marketplace, which several senators allege is already not operating in a transparent and consistently fair way.

Five-year-old Caleb Whan is very interested in whales. He asked Bay Curious a bevy of questions about what they eat and where they live, which is how he ended up trudging across a windy Sausalito beach with a veterinary pathologist, his dad and me.

The lives of sea otters — the tool-using marine mammals — were once intertwined with those of the coastal tribes in Oregon. But when fur traders discovered the value of the warm, waterproof pelts, a global trade led to the near extinction of the animals. Now, local Native Americans are hoping to bring them back.

An environmentally concerned fashion company and a fifth-generation rancher are the opposite endpoints on a short line that connects a luxury brand with sustainable agriculture. The Los Angeles-based firm Co recently unveiled its Natural World “capsule” (which is a group of designs that isn’t as robust as a full collection) featuring California-sourced wool mostly spun, woven and sewn by American businesses.

When biology education emerges from the pandemic, some faculty say lasting changes might well occur. These could include expanding the role of peer learning assistants; more flipped classes, where students watch recorded lectures in advance and do collaborative group work during class time; and a renewed recognition that the lecture model, which is how many of today's professors were taught, does not have to be how they lead the next generation into scientific inquiry.

Nearly five years after voters approved legalization of adult cannabis use in California, tensions remain high between advocates for cannabis cultivation and people who fear allowing marijuana, especially in vast rural areas, has increased lawlessness, damaged natural resources and threatened public health.

As the country, including the food and agriculture sector, continues to grapple with racial injustices brought into focus in 2020, the historically Black land-grant colleges and universities are gaining attention. The issues facing HBCUs — and the possible approaches to fix them — are complex, but a pair of lawmakers who themselves are products of the institutions are leading efforts to improve the standing of the colleges and the students they educate.

Jared Fernandes runs a dairy farm with 3,000 dairy cows that generate about 45,000 tons of manure annually. So when the state mandated that he reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like the methane released from all that poop, “you get upset,” he said. California regulations require farms to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. But the state helped pay for on-farm changes, like new technology designed to capture methane.

Fewer acres of California farmland are dedicated to growing stone fruit compared to 10 years ago when growers of freestone peaches and nectarines voted to end the California Tree Fruit Agreement. But apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, prunes (which USDA distinguishes from plums in its data) and sweet cherries continue to perform well.

The Biden administration’s climate goals are bringing attention to the role of forests in storing carbon and the need to offer incentives to private forest owners to manage their trees sustainably.

As drought grips many of California’s prime agricultural areas, its two top-grossing crops are positioned well to pull through, much as they did during the last prolonged dry spell in the mid-2010s. Grapes and almonds, which since 2004 have been the state’s top sellers, both have some natural drought tolerance thanks to their origins in the Mediterranean climate where recurring aridity is expected. But in California, their success is also tied to irrigation.