Summer heat wave: Is corn ‘sweat’ part of the problem?
Midwesterners sweltering in hot, muggy weather this summer are hearing that their agricultural mainstay—corn—is at least partly responsible for their discomfort. This is because the corn plants transpire, drawing moisture into the air, which adds to the humidity. One can think of transpiration as the crop “sweating”—the plant’s means of staying cool.
Eating organic won’t keep you safe from pesticides, but it helps
What kind of produce you eat makes all the difference in your pesticide exposure, says a paper out by Consumer Reports. For example, “eating one serving of green beans from the U.S. is 200 times riskier than eating a serving of U.S.-grown broccoli.”
Organic vs conventional yield gap is smaller than thought
A meta-analysis of 115 studies by UC-Berkeley researchers finds the yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture is smaller than thought, around 19 percent.