The world's largest retailer will hawk its products on Google Express for the first time, in a play to get a bigger chunk of the growing voice-enabled shopping market currently dominated by Amazon.
Big food companies like Walmart want farmers to reduce greenhouse emissions from nitrogen fertilizer. But the best-known program to accomplish this may not be having much effect.
Walmart has promised big cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases. To meet that goal, though, the giant retailer may have to persuade farmers to use less fertilizer. It won't be easy.
Amazon and Walmart are in a battle for low-income shoppers. Now Amazon is cutting the $10.99 monthly rate on its Prime membership to $5.99 for people who receive government assistance.
Lots of tasty, nutritious produce ends up in landfills because it doesn't meet retail beauty standards. Now Wal-Mart is testing sales of wonky apples and spuds in hundreds of Texas and Florida stores.
Most of the American outlets on the chopping block are Wal-Mart Express stores. Those are the company's smallest-format locations. Wal-Mart also said it will open 300 new stores in the coming year.
There's already Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay. Prepare for Wal-Mart Pay: a feature in Wal-Mart's app that will allow shoppers to check out with their smartphones.
Wal-Mart has said it will turn up the heat and turn down the Justin Bieber music at stores to appease employees. But it's not addressing the most glaring problems in its supply chain, activists say.
Wal-Mart has long been criticized for low pay and erratic work schedules. So when the retailer arrives in a community, it stirs controversy — but it also brings jobs and low prices.
A study argues that the density of restaurants and large-scale food retailers in parts of the U.S. has been a major factor in the rise of obesity. But some see it as a "chicken and egg" problem.
![Wade Dooley, in Albion, Iowa, uses less fertilizer than most farmers because he grows rye and alfalfa, along with corn and soybeans. "This field [of rye] has not been fertilized at all," he says.](https://knpr.org/sites/default/files/public/styles/thumbnail/public/images/npr-story/545295497_1002398434.jpg?itok=mZnNCudM "Dan Charles/NPR")
