Hot Farm | Food and Environment Reporting Network
WEBHot Farm Trailer. By Eve Abrams, March 15, 2022. Over four episodes, Hot Farm from the Food & Environment Reporting Network tells the stories of farmers who are experimenting with ways to use less water and chemicals, protect their soil and use renewable energy—as well as those who still need to be convinced that climate change is a man-made ...
Report: agriculture runoff is leading cause of water pollution in the …
WEBMar 20, 2022 · The EPI report portrays an agricultural industry that has polluted water and evaded accountability for the better part of half a century. Pollution sources include fertilizer runoff from cropland and manure runoff from factory farms, fouling waterways with pesticides, phosphorus, nitrogen and fecal bacteria. In Indiana, e.Coli bacteria was found in 73 percent of assessed waterways and harmful ...
On average, U.S. farmers are aging, but a quarter of them are …
WEBApr 11, 2019 · One-third of America’s 3.4 million farmers are over the age of 65, long regarded as retirement age, and nearly a million more of them are within a decade of that milestone, according to new USDA data. For decades, the aging U.S. farmer has been a cause for concern, expressed in this question: Who will feed America in the future? Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue saw encouraging news in the ...
Food and Environment Reporting Network | Independent.
WEBFERN is a three-time finalist for James Beard awards! May 2, 2024. FDA: Bird flu viral fragments in milk were dead; pasteurization works. By Chuck Abbott, April 28, 2024. Crime rings target EBT cards, say police. By Chuck Abbott, April 7, 2024.
What should desert farmers grow? - Food and Environment …
WEBFor decades, leaders have sought a way to equitably share what’s left of the shrinking supply, but there has always been one stubborn sticking point: Farmers consume three-quarters of the region’s precious water, often to grow thirsty, inedible crops like cotton and hay. Many of them have been here for a century or more, and they aren’t about to leave. So, why can’t they grow something ...
As the climate changes, new efforts arise to diversify what’s grown …
WEBJan 3, 2022 · Federer is a part of a growing number of farmers, researchers and nonprofits working to transform the Midwestern corn and soybean belt into a more diverse cropping region. In October, the USDA gave $10 million to a new project at Purdue University designed to study how to help farmers like Federer as they diversify their farms.
Overcoming shame, Americans ask food banks for help
WEBMay 13, 2020 · Two of every five people visiting food banks “never had to ask for help for food” before — a gauge of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, said the chief operating officer of Feeding America. Katie Fitzgerald said food banks are facing, on average, a 70 percent increase in demand. A recent survey said 7 percent of Americans received assistance from a food pantry in late April.
Epic floods in Pacific Northwest revive long-running dispute over …
WEBJan 31, 2022 · In November, when a string of catastrophic storms hit the Pacific Northwest, the Nooksack River flooded, submerging farming communities in both the U.S. and Canada. Cows were swept away, and farmers raced to save them on boats and jet skis. By the time the waters subsided, thousands of farmers and farmworkers had lost their livelihoods—particularly in British Columbia—and a long-running ...
The battle to control America’s ‘most destructive’ species: feral pigs
WEBMar 26, 2021 · A layer of frost clings to the grass on the morning Anthony DeNicola sets out to check his trap. It’s late January in South Carolina. The sun is rising, the fog is lifting, and the frogs are croaking…
FERN’s Friday Feed: Why so many cows eat toxic grass
WEBFERN and Grist. “America’s ‘fescue belt,’ named for an exotic grass called tall fescue, dominates the pastureland from Missouri and Arkansas in the west to the coast of the Carolinas in the east. Within that swath,” writes Robert Langellier, “a quarter of the nation’s cows — more than 15 million in all — graze fields that stay ...