No matter where you are in the world, one thing ties people together: We all gotta eat. But the ways people go about producing food can have disastrous consequences for the environment.

Every meal you eat now costs the planet 10 kilos in lost topsoil.

A small room in the University of Regensburg is home to more than 50 boxes of black, strikingly slender ants.

For years, conventional wisdom has held that roots don't grow as deep in hard soil because it's just too difficult for them to physically push through it. But our new research has unearthed another reason: their growth is controlled by a biological signal which can be "switched off", enabling them to punch through compacted earth. It's a discovery that could help crops to grow in even the most damaged of soils.

When you pick up a handful of dirt from your garden, you are holding more living organisms than there are people on Earth. Underneath your feet is another world of living organisms—eating each other, fighting for resources, working together to survive.