Remove Crop Remove Fertilizer Remove Industrial Agriculture
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Op-ed: The Food System Cannot Become Another Fossil-Fuel Industry Escape Hatch

Civil Eats

Growing vast monocultures of potatoes requires synthetic fertilizers whose production requires massive amounts of energy. Another 38 percent comes from retail consumption and waste; and the rest is from industrial inputs (like pesticides and fertilizer) and agriculture production.

Food 121
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Op-Ed | Why the World’s Food Systems Need to Transition Away from Industrial Agriculture

Food Tank

Today, this model of industrial agriculture is no longer fit for purpose. Switching to agroecology offers a way to produce food within diverse landscapes growing and nurturing different crops, livestock and fisheries suited to the conditions and communities that live in the area.

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Across Farm Country, Fertilizer Pollution Impacts Not Just Health, but Water Costs, Too

Civil Eats

Those tiles, which were first installed in the mid-1800s and have now largely been replaced with plastic pipes, ultimately allowed farmers to grow crops on land that was once too wet to farm. The annual crops and drainage tile started to create this leaky system.” Fertilizer as Poison The U.S. Those nitrates leak into aquifers.

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Ask a Scientist: What Value Do Wetlands Provide?

The Equation

While development, forestry, and climate change all contribute to wetland loss, draining for agriculture has been the single biggest cause since the 1800s. Agricultures devastating toll is evident in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Upper Midwest, where it caused 95% of wetland loss between 1997 and 2009.

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Returning the ‘Three Sisters’ – Corn, Beans and Squash – to Native American Farms Nourishes People, Land and Cultures

Daily Yonder

The first Europeans who reached the Americas were shocked at the abundant food crops they found. Displaced from the Land As Euro-Americans settled permanently on the most fertile North American lands and acquired seeds that Native growers had carefully bred, they imposed policies that made Native farming practices impossible. (Map

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Op-ed: Big Ag Touts Its Climate Strengths, While Awash in Fossil Fuels

Civil Eats

Powerful PR firms have worked overtime in recent years to craft a narrative that highlight farms’ potential role in mitigating climate change, but the truth is that agriculture consumes 6 percent of the world’s fossil fuel energy , and the oil and gas industries rely on industrial agriculture for one of its largest and most lucrative markets.

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Illinois Dust Storm Disaster Is a Warning for Agriculture

The Equation

Because like the Dust Bowl of so many decades ago, this tragedy stemmed from a collision of multiple systemic problems—in this case, unchecked climate change layered atop the excesses of industrial agriculture. Fertilizer runoff can also affect urban communities downstream.