Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Agriculture”
Clearing grasslands to make way for biofuels may seem counterproductive, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study today (April 2, 2015) that crops, including the corn and soy commonly used for biofuels, expanded onto 7 million acres of new land in the U.S. over a recent four-year period, replacing millions of acres of grasslands. The study — from …
Lack of government policies on food and water safety is causing the death of 2.2 million people, including children, every year across the globe, health experts said on Sunday. They said the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the past 50 years has grown nearly 170 times. As a consequence, persistent residues of the chemicals contaminate food and disperse in …
USDA researchers have identified the neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin as a likely contributor to monarch butterfly declines in North America. The USDA research is published in the journal Science of Nature and was published online on April 3rd (Pecenka and Lundgren 2015). Monarch butterfly populations (Danaus Plexippus) have declined precipitously in North America in the last twenty years. This decline has …
A new report from the health organization Environmental Working Group released on Tuesday dispels many of the myths that have been propagated by biotechnology companies in defense of GMO’s. Many proponents of GMO’s suggest that the technology will “feed the world” by yielding larger crops, however, the new report is said to debunk these claims, showing that traditional farming methods are “shown …
After descending into Stumptown Coffee’s Seattle roastery, where bags of beans from different countries wait for their turn in the WWII-era roasting machine, we gather for the daily cupping: a sampling, by smell and taste, of coffee from five different farms. Today’s cupping features beans from farms in Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia. The production roaster, Jesse Hughey, describes the …
New research published in Nature Communications provides insight into how large-scale deforestation could impact global food production by triggering changes in local climate. In the study, researchers from the United States and China zero in on albedo (the amount of the sun’s radiation reflected from Earth’s surface) and evapotranspiration (the transport of water into the atmosphere from soil, vegetation, and …
How long can you go without water? You could probably survive a few weeks without water for cooking. If you stopped washing, the threat to your life might only come from people who can’t stand the smell. But most people won’t live for more than three days without water to drink. It makes sense: our bodies are about 65 percent water. According to …
The biotechnology industry “myth” that feeding billions of people necessitates genetically engineered agriculture has been debunked by a new report out Tuesday by the nonprofit health organization Environmental Working Group. The report, Feeding the World Without GMOs (pdf), argues that investment in genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, has failed to expand global food security. It advocates more traditional methods “shown to actually …
‘The fact is, there are strategies that take advantage of what we already know about using resources more efficiently that have the proven potential to double food supplies while at the same time reducing agriculture’s burden on the environment.’ (Image:naturalsociety.com) EWG released a new analysis on Tuesday debunking the myth that genetically engineered crops (often called GMOs) will be crucial to …
The latest salvo in the battle over Africa’s seed systems has been fired, writes Stephen Greenberg, with the Gates Foundation and USAID playing puppet-masters to Africa’s governments – now meeting in Addis Ababa – as they drive forward corporation-friendly seed regulations that exclude and marginalize the small farmers whose seeds and labour feed the continent. A battle is currently being …
