Ensia articles

Around the world two billion people eat insects on a regular basis. The current hotbeds — or should we say, hot pots — of consumption include Latin America, central Africa and Southeast Asia. As we look for new ways to feed a burgeoning global population, will entomophagy spread to other corners of the globe?

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization has designated 2015 the International Year of Soils, and with good reason. As this infographic shows, a whopping 95 percent of our food comes from soil — and if sustainably managed, could produce 58 percent more food globally.

There’s cause for concern, though. FAO concludes 33 percent of our soils are already degraded, meaning the physical, chemical and biological structu

How on Earth are we going to figure out how to feed the 9.5 billion people who will be inhabiting this planet by 2050? Perhaps by looking to the ultimate problem-solver — nature.

On Jan. 19, the Biomimicry Institute

Humans have been “framed out of the picture” when it comes to documenting nature, says Conservation International executive vice president and senior scientist M. Sanjayan in the opening of a new series, “EARTH A New Wild,” which premiers Feb. 4 on PBS. Sanjayan and producer David Allen — “probably the finest natural history filmmaker out there today,” according to Sanjayan — didn’t want to make another documentary that showed &ldquo

As cities become bigger and more populated over the coming decades, how they will be built will become more and more important. Will human well-being be placed behind continuous growth? Or will we build cities that actually take into account the people who live in them?

In this documentary from director Nick Ahlm