If our July issue doesn’t make you want to spend time in the garden, it will certainly make you hungry for fresh produce. Our visual feature introduces readers to Second Generation Seeds, a collective that preserves Asian heritage seeds, food and culture. Gardening once brought Black families together in South Phoenix. Now, activists hope that reviving it will help restore community, create a green refuge from the heat and ease the stress of climate change. Western foods, like Westerners, are surprisingly diverse. Both landscapes and communities need clean water, but three years after New Mexico’s largest fire, ash and mud still pollute the Las Vegas area’s watershed. If we want clean water, we must preserve the West’s increasingly vulnerable wetlands. Restoring Sonora, Mexico’s grasslands will help protect North American birds. Indigenous leaders from around the world gathered at the U.N. to defend their right to make free and informed decisions. Can our fear of climate change bring us together? In today’s troubled world, scientists cannot hide behind neutrality.

An illustrated feature about Second Generation Seeds, a farming collective that reclaims Asian crops and culture in California and throughout the U.S.
An illustrated feature about Second Generation Seeds, a farming collective that reclaims Asian crops and culture in California and throughout the U.S. Credit: Angie Kang/High Country News

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