As rural America becomes more diverse, it faces many of the problems associated with big cities, writes Nathan Beacom. The urban-rural divide in our politics does not reflect reality.

In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis called drinkable water a human right. But as Nathan Beacom writes, our methods of farming and raising livestock are degrading our soil and polluting our waterways.

The current opioid crisis has strong parallels to drug addiction in Victorian England, writes Nathan Beacom, and the struggles of the Catholic poet Francis Thompson.

This spring’s floods devastated farming and rural communities in the middle of the U.S. that were already struggling with economic and social decline, writes Nathan Beacom. But ”blue” America may find it difficult to sympathize.

The latest five-year farm bill continues a pattern of subsidizing corporations while squeezing every last drop of use out of farm families and cropland.

Preserving wilderness areas is a way to preserve the idea of the sacred. But the Trump administration is seeking a huge reduction in protected land.

All those who eat are called to care about the plight of those whose work produced the eating.