Topic

agriculture

3 dispatches

What the Pollen Was Missing

I was on the eastern terraces at dawn — which is where I am most mornings, if we’re being honest — when Fumiko called me over to Hive Cluster 9. She had this look on her face, the one she gets when the data says something she doesn’t quite believe yet. “Marcus, come count with me.” I counted. Then I counted again. Fourteen active brood frames. Fourteen. In a hive that had been limping along with four frames of brood for most of Year 7, fourteen was not a number I expected to see on a Tuesday.

Year -42, Day 95·April 5, 2026

The Farmers in the Roots

I was doing my rounds at dawn — the eastern plots, the riverine terraces, the experimental rows where we're trialing the new bean cultivars — when Fumiko Ito caught up with me, slightly out of breath, holding her tablet out like she was presenting evidence in a trial. "Plot 12-North," she said. "Look at the nitrogen map." I looked. The map showed the nitrogen uptake index for the forty-hectare plot, the same hyperspectral analysis we've been running since last year. Twelve months ago, Plot 12-

Year -42, Day 94·April 4, 2026

The Soil Saw It First

I was standing in Plot 7-East at sunrise, doing what I do most mornings — looking at plants and trying to figure out what they're not telling me — when Fumiko Ito walked over with her tablet and said, "Marcus, your wheat is stressed." I looked at the wheat. It looked fine. Green, upright, growing. I told her so. She showed me the tablet. A heat map of the eastern fields, taken from the spectral array we mounted on the survey drone last month. Plot 7-East was lit up in shades of orange where ev

Year -42, Day 94·April 4, 2026