Hanging on a gate is a sign reading: “Potatoes — healthy and delicious.” The slogan, to which the word “rare” could justifiably be added, is in line with Cornel Lindemann-Berk’s philosophy of quality over quantity. “We don’t have enough rain in the summer,” he tells DW. “And since we don’t want to water them, we’ve […]
By Jennifer Weeks From climate change to omnipresent plastic waste, 2019 delivered a lot of discouraging environmental news. Several special reports this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change documented how global warming is altering the planet’s lands, forests, oceans and frozen regions. Another U.N. report warned that the Earth is losing species at […]
By Jon Steinman “Who owns your grocery store?” It’s the question emblazoned on the back of a van that has ferried me across 34 states to visit 128 consumer-owned grocery stores (food co-ops) and another 20 in development. I spent 13 years investigating every facet of the food supply. It led me to the conclusion […]
New Jersey senator and presidential hopeful Cory Booker put forth the Farm System Reform Act of 2019, in recognition of the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, which would put a stop to any new factory farms, as The Hill reported. The bill will reform the agriculture system by breaking up monopolistic practices in the industry […]
By Lauren Wolahan For the first time ever, the UN is building out a roadmap for curbing carbon pollution from agriculture. To take part in that process, a coalition of U.S. farmers traveled to the UN climate conference in Madrid, Spain this month to make the case for the role that large-scale farming operations, long […]
A group of scientists is warning that livestock production must not expand after 2030 for the world to stave off ecological disaster. A letter published in Lancet Planetary Health, signed by more than 50 leading scientists in the field, calls for meat production to peak by 2030, after which governments need firm commitments to stop […]
By Claire O’Connor Agriculture is on the front lines of climate change. Whether it’s the a seven-year drought drying up fields in California, the devastating Midwest flooding in 2019, or hurricane after hurricane hitting the Eastern Shore, agriculture and rural communities are already feeling the effects of a changing climate. Scientists expect climate change to […]
By Dan Nosowitz It’s no secret that the past few years have been disastrous for the American farming industry. Freak weather, oversupply, trade wars, pesticide damage — it’s been a perfect storm, on top of all the regular storms, for American farmers. The American Farm Bureau Federation, commonly just called the Farm Bureau, released a […]
By Alex Robinson Leah Garcés used to hate poultry farmers. The animal rights activist, who opposes factory farming, had an adversarial relationship with chicken farmers until around five years ago, when she sat down to listen to one. She met a poultry farmer called Craig Watts in rural North Carolina and learned that the problems […]