climate change
The final day of FERN’s food-waste series: the role of farm-labor abuse, and charting waste through apples
An estimated 33 percent — some 78 million tons — of the U.S. food supply is wasted every year, including nearly a pound of food per day in every household. This in a country with some 44 million food insecure people. It’s also a climate problem; all the waste generates methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. Can’t we just send would-be-wasted food to hungry mouths? Unfortunately, our food system is notoriously inefficient, with waste found on farms, in grocery stores, schools, and our refrigerators.This special six-part series, produced in partnership with Inverse, looks at how data, technology, ingenuity, and common sense can be used to fight this waste. With all these ingredients, and a handful of worms, the solution may be within reach.
Next up in FERN’s special food-waste series: grocery stores and schools
FERN launches special food-waste series
It seems like a simple problem. Nearly a pound of food per day in every household gets tossed in America — a country with some 44 million food insecure people. Can’t we just send would-be-wasted food to hungry mouths? Unfortunately, our food systems are notoriously complex with waste found on farms, in grocery stories, schools, and our refrigerators. This special series, produced in partnership with Inverse, looks at how data, technology, ingenuity, and common sense can be used to fight this waste. With all these ingredients, and a handful of worms, the solution may be within reach.
Report: An ‘interventionist’ approach is needed to decarbonize agriculture
Congress should double agricultural research funding, now running at $4 billion a year, and direct the Agriculture Department to take a "more interventionist" role in decarbonizing agriculture, said a California think tank on Monday. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Solar and wind farms generate controversy but occupy a sliver of rural land
Local governments have imposed at least 2,600 restrictions on wind and solar power projects in their jurisdictions, with local opposition seeming to rise with the size of the project, said a USDA report on wind and solar development in rural areas. Wind and solar projects had a combined footprint of 423,974 acres in 2020, or 0.05 percent of the nation's 870 million acres of farmland, said the four economists who wrote the report.
Environmental, anti-hunger groups join opposition to House farm bill
Anti-hunger groups, environmentalists, and fiscal conservatives are mobilizing against the House Republicans’ proposed farm bill ahead of its markup later this week, arguing that it benefits agribusiness at the expense of low-income people, taxpayers, and the climate.
Coalition: High price, low volume pose challenges to sustainable aviation fuel
Cleaner-burning sustainable jet fuel costs two to four times more than fuel distilled from petroleum, said the newly formed Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition, which aims to ramp up production and bring down costs. Aviation accounts for 2 to 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.
Hydropower is a green-energy darling. But it comes with tremendous costs.
In FERN’s latest story, published with Truthdig, reporter Christopher Ketcham unpacks the extensive human and environmental costs of hydroelectricity, even as government regulators, environmental journalists, climate academics, and green-grid design wizards celebrate it as a key piece of our sustainable energy strategy.
GOP-written farm bill is headed for House defeat, says senior Democrat
House Republicans are following the "same ideological strategy that led to the failures of farm bills on the House floor in 2014 and 2018," said Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. Republicans plan to tamper with future SNAP benefits, a red line for Democrats, said Scott in an essay.
Brazil and Colombia sharply reduce forest loss
With new leaders in office, Brazil and Colombia dramatically reduced their loss of mature tropical forest in 2023, said Global Forest Watch in an annual report on Thursday. Nonetheless, the world’s tropics lost 3.7 million hectares (more than 14,000 square miles) of primary forest. Losses have run at 3 to 4 million hectares annually for the past two decades.
EPA calls for lower-polluting buses and heavy trucks
Manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks and buses will be required to produce vehicles that reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 60 percent by model year 2032 under a new EPA regulation. The agency said a variety of technologies can be used by truck makers to meet the tailpipe emissions target, from cleaner-burning internal combustion engines to hybrids, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells.
Midwest maple syrup producers adapt to uncertainty in face of changing climate
This year’s maple sap season began early for many producers in Upper Midwestern states, who experienced shorter seasons. Some credit those shifts to the year’s record-warm winter. Thanks to the El Niño effect, the season ranked among the top 10 warmest. But Indigenous and non-Native experts say human-caused climate change also is having varied and unpredictable effects on the maple harvest. Farmers and Indigenous communities whose ancestors have tapped trees since time immemorial are altering their practices and planning for an erratic future. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Farmworkers gather in New York to chart future of policy and organizing goals
Farmworkers and labor organizers from across North America will convene in New York City this weekend for a “people’s tribunal,” where they plan to produce a list of overarching priorities that will guide their organizing efforts going forward. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Pennsylvania dairies put the notion of climate-smart milk to the test
The U.S. dairy industry is aiming to go greenhouse gas neutral by 2050. Researchers have many ideas to help get them there — from feed additives that minimize methane-filled cow burps to new timing for fertilizer applications. But there’s little data on how well many of these strategies work on actual dairies with varying environmental conditions. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Study: Climate change will drive up food costs, threatening political stability
Global warming may drive up food inflation by as much as 3.2 percentage points a year, based on temperature increases projected for 2035, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment on Thursday. Warming is also projected to cause an overall rise in inflation of up to 1.2 percent annually during that period.
Ice cover on the upper Mississippi was fleeting this winter. Is this our future?
The above-average temperatures across the upper Midwest, driven in part by the El Niño climate pattern and in part by human-caused climate change, made for less than one month of safe ice on the Mississippi River this winter, scientists estimate. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
We need a farm bill for farmworkers
In the latest piece in our series with Mother Jones, The Farm Bill Fight, Teresa Cotsirilos explains why the nation's most important agricultural law largely ignores farmworkers—and why that needs to change.
The ‘four corners’ struggle to square the farm bill circle
House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson declared, "I am at the table" to write the new farm bill — with multibillion-dollar cuts already rejected by Democrats on the committee. "I hope my colleagues across the aisle join me," said Thompson, as farm bill leaders clashed over the direction of the moribund legislation.
How climate change could turn America’s poorest region into a produce-growing hub
In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.