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Seeds. Usually cheap, easily acquired, often ignored: what are they worth? For some, they form the beginning of a post-apocalyptic economy. Our look at a group of people who believe societal collapse is imminent – and are stockpiling seeds to be ready.

Here’s where to start.

Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton visited the Petaluma Seed Bank, established in 2009 in a building that was once California's Central Bank.

Last night, a fire at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas exploded as firefighters worked, flattening the town and killing an unknown number of people. Onlookers described the plume as like a mushroom cloud; the blast was felt 40 miles away. How did this happen? Why a fertilizer plant? What kind of safety precautions exist to prevent such disasters? We attempt to explain.

As wild pigs tear up up soybeans, rice and other crops in Louisiana, Cy Brown and James Palmer take to the sky with a pig-killing drone.

Technically, humane slaughter became law in the United States with the 1958 Humane Slaughter Act, intended to prevent the “needless suffering” of livestock during slaughter. But while it’s one thing to understand slaughter practices on a theoretical level, it’s another to be in the same room when a cow dies.

Yesterday, Modern Farmer received what we believe to be the single greatest pitch in the history of story pitches. We spent much of yesterday pondering its mysteries: who is this “Web Kiefer”? What does magic mushroom mold taste like? Could a bird make this painting? In the end, we decided that we should just publish the pitch in its entirety and let you, dear reader, make up your own mind.

One sad fact about the state of modern farming: there are plenty of people with sheep out there; there are fewer and fewer who know how to shear them. Fewer still work like Emily Chamelin does – with blades.

In the early 1940s William George Pope, and his wife Mildred "Moodie” Pope, left Utica, NY and bought a farm. They named it High Acres, and started raising Ayeshire Cattle. Pope ...