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Dec 8, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Brooks Lamb |Dan Chapman |Sherry Kempf |Bryce Oates
Dustin Watson looks over the pastures and woodlands he grew up on. Behind him is the farmhouse his great-grandfather built, not far from the chicken coops and tractor sheds his grandfather raised decades ago. Cattle graze near one of his favorite places on the farm, the tree he was recently married under. It’s a rare moment of rest for a man who doesn’t often sit still.
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Nov 24, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Dan Chapman
The Dugdown Mountain Corridor is coming together as one of Georgia’s most critical wild animal pathways. The multi-player project—U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, transportation agencies, The Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, county governments and private landowners—would include nearly 100,000 acres of protected and conserved land.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Matt Barron |Dan Chapman |Bryce Oates |Jake Davis
When Americans walk up to the meat case at their local supermarket or grocery store, they are looking for low prices on that package of pork chops, chicken wings or the holiday ham. Cheap food is a reality for most of us. U.S. eaters pay a lower share of their incomes for food than any nation in the world. But that cheap food exacts a brutal, unseen cost far from the checkout counter in the form of abused animals and workers, environmental degradation and ravaged rural communities.
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Jun 2, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Dan Chapman |Barn Raiser
Mangroves? The tropical plant that shrouds the coastlines of Florida, the Caribbean and Central America in shadowy, impenetrable greenery? The swamp-loving bushes with tangles of reddish roots that disappear into salt water? The so-called “walking trees” that, apparently, have now skipped up the east coast from Florida into Georgia? Yup. And the consequences are fascinating, and far-reaching. “This is climate change, there’s no denying it, this is proof,” Vervaeke says.
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Apr 7, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Thurka Sangaramoorthy |Dan Chapman |Joe Engleman |Joel Bleifuss
I agreed to meet the mobile health unit staff at the local Walmart parking lot outside Cambridge’s town center so that I could accompany them to their appointments that day. Cambridge sits on the Choptank River, a major tributary of the Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 90 miles southeast of Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. Its waterfront, small town feel makes it a popular destination for nature lovers, recreation enthusiasts and history buffs alike.
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Apr 4, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Bryce Oates |Dan Chapman |Bill McKibben |Joe Engleman
Then, in a sign of the fiscal extremism taking over the right, Republicans took their attacks a step further. They went after hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers, many of whom, the Republicans say, are “overpaid.”Republican committee members attacked Vilsack and the Biden administration for their handling of farm labor and farmworker issues. Rep.
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Mar 10, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Joe Engleman |Stephanie Woodard |Dan Chapman |Eve Allen
For decades, Cairo—wedged between the Missouri and Kentucky border at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers—has struggled to grow its local economy and population. One hundred years ago, Cairo boasted more than 15,000 citizens; today, its population has shrunk below 1,700. Median household income hovers just above $30,000, with about 24% of residents living in poverty—more than double the average in Illinois. Cairo doesn’t even have a gas station.
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Mar 10, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Dan Chapman |Joel Bleifuss |Justin Perkins
Increasingly, the marshes are disappearing. Rising seas force them to move further and further inland. Yet seawalls, roads and condos leave little room for the marshes to migrate. Meanwhile, with roots continuously submerged, the cordgrass drowns. The damage is all too apparent at the Martha Randolph Stevens Park, one of Georgia’s few coastal enclaves where descendants of the formerly enslaved were deeded a slice of the salt marsh.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Joel Bleifuss |Justin Perkins |Dan Chapman |Joe Engleman
Brandon Byrd grew up in Metter, Georgia, population 4,004 (2020), in rural deep-red Candler County, about 65 miles west of Savannah (in 2016 and 2020, more than 70% of voters in Candler County chose Trump). He graduated from Georgia State University in Atlanta with a B.S. in Public Policy Analysis.
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Nov 12, 2023 | 
barnraisingmedia.com | Alli O'Connell |Kip Dooley |Emily Shepherd |Dan Chapman
Customers hop out to place sorted recycling in blue labeled bins, empty their compost, throw their trash bags in the trash compactor and get their dump cards—the method of payment at the dump—punched by one of two employees on duty. Mimi Heersema-Smith, 72, begins her trash errand by jumping out of her car and hugging Marty Curry, the MRF Director. “I’ve been coming here since the 1950s, and this place has never been run as efficiently and enjoyably as it is now,” she says.
