This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
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.
Today, this model of industrialagriculture 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.
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.
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.
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
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 industrialagriculture for one of its largest and most lucrative markets.
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 industrialagriculture. Fertilizer runoff can also affect urban communities downstream.
In a county that was intentionally poisonedand a world suffering from a changing climatehe is reviving the soil under his feet by transitioning away from pesticide-dependent row crops like tobacco to industrial hemp, which is known to sequester carbon and remediate soil, and using earth-friendly organic and regenerative methods.
But with the heavy rain came floods that damaged lives, property, and crops. With fields waterlogged, many farmworkers were unable to work and pick produce, signaling that crops like strawberries might see lower yields and higher prices in the near future.
Conventional agriculture heavily relies on synthetic chemicals in the form of fertilizers and pesticides. SHI-Belize partner farmer Juvini Acosta reforests land affected by conventional agriculture. Industrialagriculture prioritizes profit over the health of the planet.
.” ” — Rattan Lal, professor of soil science + 2020 World Food Prize Laureate Conventional, or industrial, agriculture uses chemicals to defend crops from weeds, certain insect species, and diseases. However, these chemicals harm the very thing the crops rely on: soil.
Generically called the “farm” bill, it is actually a farm and food bill that supports a wide range of programs, including ones that cover crop insurance, financial credit, and export subsidies for farmers, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.
Catastrophe loomed everywhere I looked: in the dust bowls on the once-fertile plains of central Turkey, in the vanishing lakes of Mexico City, in the fetid cesspools outside the factory farms of North Carolina, in the disease-ravaged olive trees of Puglia, in the rapid wiping away of diverse food webs in every biome.
Aidee Guzman, 30, grew up the daughter of immigrants in California’s Central Valley, among massive fields of monocrops that epitomize intense, industrialagriculture. And today, even when the soil stays on the ground, we’re actively destroying it through the use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and more.
Many cancers are linked to nitrates , which are found in drinking water contaminated with manure or nitrogen fertilizer, and advocates are concerned about the link. And for good reason: Cattle is the top-ranked agricultural commodity in the U.S. Northeast Iowa’s Driftless region has not seen glacial drift in over 2 million years.
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.
When farmer Joshua Manske heard about the acquisition of an Iowa fertilizer plant by Koch Industries in December, he saw it as a “microcosm of what’s going on nationally.” That’s what’s going to help drive your fertilizer prices where they should be between supply and demand. billion fertilizer plant to Iowa.
However, industrialagriculture — characterized by the use of heavy tillage, intensive monocropping, and excessive grazing — has resulted in the degradation of the very soils that sustain our food supply. CONTENT SOURCED FROM LEARN LIBERTY Written by: Max Payne May 19, 2023 The connection between a farmer and their land is unmatched.
The crop he and co-founder Morgan-Lea Fogg gather each spring lies just below the surface: long lines of slick brown sugar kelp. A quick taste test proves it true: Their crop is ready to harvest. The World Bank said raising this versatile crop in just 5 percent of U.S. territorial waters would produce as much protein as 2.3
Their app, called Plantix, could near-instantaneously diagnose a crop pest or disease simply by looking at a photo of the plant. A farmer uses the Plantix app to diagnose crop pests and disease. At home, they ran in local punk circles, and a trace of anti-establishment nonconformity has colored their work in agriculture.
She later became the executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Toppenish Creek , which advocates for improved oversight of industrialagriculture. A primary cause of these nonpoint sources is runoff from nitrogen fertilizer on cropland. full_link LEARN MORE Find out why climate change has intensified fertilizer runoff.
Farms that use extractive agriculture usually are outside the official community line, and therefore they pay no taxes to the communities they pollute. They create little employment in the local area because they grow cash crops that don’t need many farmworkers.
Within decades, a network of dams, levees and canals had dried up the basin, transforming the fertile crater into an agricultural hub. Today, the four counties sitting in the lake bed account for more than $25 billion in food and crop production, with Tulare County ranking number one in the nation for milk and oranges.
Alexander starts with the pea which developed widely across the globe beginning in the Fertile Crescent, where it dates back 8500 years to Neolithic settlements. Montgomery and biologist Anne Biklé, unravels the threads that connect soil, crops, animals and people. This latest book, by geology professor David R.
Birds, bats and insects live in balance on the farm, creating a healthy ecosystem where pests pose fewer problems, and the naturally poor-quality soil is able to produce sufficient varied and delicious crops to keep a successful veg box scheme running.
Our first sustainable tip is the reason behind our work: Tip #1: Support regenerative agriculture Conventional, or industrial, agriculture heavily relies on chemicals to protect crops from weeds, specific insect species, and diseases.
The heroes are new cover crops, nitrogen producing microbes for crops and gene editing to produce never-been-possible-before products and traits.” Ag-tech that is smart, innovative and actually improves or increases the quality, productivity or profitability of crop and livestock production will find a market and eager adopters.”
What happens is this: The genetic code of Bt seeds are programmed to produce toxins that attack the stomach linings of crop-munching caterpillars. But the US government’s insistence that GM crops are safe because they have been planted and consumed by US farm animals 25 years does not hold up. But those days have ended.
These practices include reducing or eliminating tilling of soil, planting “cover crops” that grow during the off-season and are not harvested, improving how farmers use fertilizer and manure, and planting trees. But I think we should be much more vigilant about maintaining productivity” as more farmers start using cover crops.
You described our industrial food system as insane and absurd. Case in point: The fertilizers and pesticides used on farms have to pollute our rivers, oceans, and drinking water. We first met in the 1990s at the Culinary Institute of America, at a conference about genetically modified crops. How could they not?
It was the annual field day at The Mill , a popular Mid-Atlantic retailer of agricultural products including seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides. In fact, the two practices that dominate current markets—no-till and cover crops—require herbicides to succeed in the way they’re practiced on most commodity farms.
According to the EPA, it applies about a half million tons of pesticides, 12 million tons of nitrogen, and 4 million tons of phosphorus fertilizer to crops in the continental United States every year. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has been ringing the alarm bell about agricultural pollution for years.
2202) YELLOW FLAG Adds “precision agriculture” to the Conservation Title and creates practices in EQIP. The bill within EQIP allows up to 90% cost-share for precision agriculture practices. The precision agriculture and automation focus detracts from much-needed investments in farmer-led, scale-appropriate research.
Spoor’s mission was to get Ocho Sur’s crop certified as deforestation-free, but exactly what that means depends on when you start the clock. Oil palm, as he rightly noted, can sequester more carbon than such annual crops , though studies have found it absorbs less than half that of a standing forest.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content