On a clear morning in April, after milking his seven cows, Tim Sauder looked over the pasture where he had just turned the animals out to graze. Like many dairy farms, Sauder’s fields swayed with a variety of greenery: chicory, alfalfa and clover. But they were also full of something typically missing on an agricultural landscape — trees. Thousands of them.
By Shannan Lenke Stoll The Senate Agriculture Committee just passed its version of a farm bill in a 20-1 vote Thursday. It’s one more step in what has been a delayed journey to pass a 2018–2022 bill before the current one expires in September. The farm bill is a colossal piece of highly partisan legislation […]
By Marcia Delonge Recently, some fellow data geeks and I spent (quite a lot of) time ranking all 50 states on the health and sustainability of their food systems, from soil to spoon. We went through the trouble for a few reasons. First, as you may have heard in bits and pieces, the state of […]
A farm bill with dangerous consequences for endangered species and conservation efforts failed to pass the House on Friday, The Guardian reported. The 2018 version of the major agricultural bill was criticized by environmental groups because it would have allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve new pesticides without assessing their impact on wildlife […]
The newest version of the 2018 Farm Bill, set for a vote on Friday, includes an unprecedented provision allowing the widespread killing of endangered plants and animals with pesticides. The bill launches the broadest attack on the Endangered Species Act in 45 years, eliminating the requirement that federal agencies analyze pesticides’ harm to the nation’s […]