By Paul Brown When countries run short of food, they need to find solutions fast, and one answer can be urban farming. That was the remedy Cuba seized with both hands 30 years ago when it was confronted with the dilemma of an end to its vital food imports. And what worked then for Cuba […]
By Megan Konar My team at the University of Illinois just developed the first high-resolution map of the U.S. food supply chain. Our map is a comprehensive snapshot of all food flows between counties in the U.S. – grains, fruits and vegetables, animal feed and processed food items. To build the map, we brought together […]
By David R. Montgomery Would it sound too good to be true if I was to say that there was a simple, profitable and underused agricultural method to help feed everybody, cool the planet, and revitalize rural America? I used to think so, until I started visiting farmers who are restoring fertility to their land, […]
Farms with just one or a handful of different crops encourage fewer species of pollinating and pest-controlling insects to linger, ultimately winnowing away crop yields, according to a new study. Up to half of the detrimental impacts of the “landscape simplification” that monocropping entails come as a result of a diminished mix of ecosystem service-providing […]
By Lisa Schulte Moore Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses bring the state a lot of political attention during presidential election cycles. But in my view, even though some candidates have outlined positions on food and farming, agriculture rarely gets the attention it deserves. As a scientist at Iowa’s land-grant university, I believe our state is at the […]
By Dan Nosowitz While the northern reaches of the continental U.S. are finally starting to feel a little chill, the Southeast is dealing with something very different. The United States Drought Monitor releases an update once a week with a map of the drought situation across the country. Its report this week echoes what farmers […]
By Alex Robinson The effects of climate change are nothing new for maple syrup farmers like Larry Yoder. The Indiana syrup producer has seen worrying changes to the “sugaring” season in his lifetime alone. When Yoder first started sugaring with his grandfather, the family expected to tap its trees around the first weekend in March. […]
The Trump administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule rule Thursday, a rule intended to protect 60 percent of the nation’s waterways from pollution, The New York Times reported. At stake is the definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The Obama-era rule expanded that definition from larger bodies of […]
The ocean isn’t the only ecosystem threatened by microplastics. A first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in Environmental Science and Technology found that particles from the kind of plastic commonly used in bags and bottles stunt the growth of earthworms, a finding with major implications for soil health, The Independent reported. Check out our latest paper on […]
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