climate change

Hog giant Smithfield Foods has launched a program to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2025, but it is doing so largely by focusing on the fertilizer applications of its grain farmers. While that’s an important step, it also sidesteps the biggest source of the company’s emissions — its 19 million hogs, FERN’s latest story, in partnership with The WorldPost, reported. (No paywall)

Thanks to climate change, "marine waters, even far out in the high seas, are losing oxygen ... upending where and how sea creatures live," says National Geographic, citing a study in the journal Science. "The authors conclude that it’s emptying vast regions of the ocean, changing what and where creatures live and eat, threatening to shrink fish populations and individual fish, and making overfishing more likely."

According to NASA data, 2017 was the second-hottest year on record, or the hottest year without an El Niño weather pattern, which drives up temperatures in the short term.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change says that winemakers ought to be learning about the great diversity of grape varieties in order to adapt to a changing climate.

For hundreds of years, a network of earthen canals that ribbon through New Mexico have been central to a thriving small-farm scene and a communal way of life. But those canals, called acequias, and the way of life they support, are being pushed to the brink by a changing climate, a development boom, and the imperatives of the modern economy, says Alexis Adams in FERN's latest story, published with The Weather Channel. (No paywall)

Climate change is bringing a longer and warmer growing season to the Northeast along with heavy rainfall that can delay spring planting, says a study led by Cornell scientists.

An investment network, Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return, says in a report that countries could begin taxing meat to drive down consumption and meet their goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reports Civil Eats.

Summer storms and unpredictable “flash droughts” have proven a challenge to farmers who grow malt barley in Montana. As the climate has gradually warmed, a once-hospitable environment for the grain has become far more tenuous, says Ari LeVaux in FERN’s latest story, with The Weather Channel. (No paywall)

Global climate emissions are on the rise again, after staying relatively flat between 2014-2016. Researchers with the Global Carbon Project predict that emissions levels will increase anywhere from 0.8 to 3 percent in 2017, says NPR.

The inspector general’s office at the EPA will investigate an April meeting between EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and the National Mining Association, said The Hill newspaper.

According to a UN report, 2017 is on track to be one of the three hottest years on record. The cause, it says, is climate change, which the report implicates in “extraordinary weather,” including extreme hurricanes, floods, and droughts.

Much of the arable land in China, the world's largest rice producer, is off-limits for growing rice because there is too much salt in the soil or in the available irrigation water. Researchers are making progress, however, on developing 200 varieties that tolerate salty water although at far lower levels than found in sea water.

In contrast to the Trump administration’s stance, a 600-page report by government researchers concludes it's "extremely likely" that human activities are the "dominant cause" of climate change.

A team of graduate students at USC's engineering school are turning an idea from a high school student into a reality – a mobile computer application that will alert California farmworkers when temperatures top 95 F and to allow them to report unsafe working conditions to state regulators, says Civil Eats. "The next big step will come this summer, when they launch a pilot project of CalorApp with farmworkers at two companies, Fabbri Farms in Bakersfield and the Grapery in Shafter."

In Montana's Tom Miner Basin, just outside the protected wilds of Yellowstone National Park, ranchers are embracing a variety of non-lethal strategies to deal with an influx of grizzlies, reports Ensia in a story done in partnership with the Food & Environment Reporting Network. It's an experiment that could have broad implications for how the livestock industry manages these and other top predators as climate change restricts their traditional food supply.

The Green Revolution of high-yielding wheat, rice and maize varieties, boosted by synthetic fertilizers, is credited with averting famine in the developing world. In a speech at a London think tank, FAO director general Jose Graziano de Silva said, "The future of agriculture is not input-intensive, but knowledge-intensive."

The Interior Department would auction off millions of acres of public land for oil and gas development, according to a draft obtained by The Nation of the department's strategic plan for the next five years. "It states that the DOI is committed to achieving 'American energy dominance' through the exploitation of 'vast amounts' of untapped energy reserves on public lands."

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.