Climate Food and Agriculture

China's water table levels are dropping fast

If you aren’t normally fascinated by China’s agricultural problems, then an obscure report issued this summer on the state of the nation’s water supply might have struck you as rather dry. But in this case, dry is precisely the problem: The water table under the North China Plain, which produces over half of China’s wheat […]

The U.S. should take a cue from nature in its fight against terrorism

Momentum grows for greener ways of farming

Rice as rice can be. In the humid hills of China’s Yunnan province, rice farmers make their living from plots of land smaller than many American yards. High, cool, and wet, the country here is rich, yielding almost a thousand pounds of rice per acre. But farmers face a perennial scourge: rice blast. Rice blast […]

How Now, Brown Cow?

The 450,000 dairy cows in Southern California are contributing to some of the dirtiest air in the country — and regulators want to clamp down. The cows kick up tons of dust and their manure emits ammonia that joins with nitrogen oxide from vehicle tailpipes to create particulate pollution. Dairies in the area account for […]

Goat for the Gold

Pampas and Circumstances

More than 1,500 farmers now plant 7 million acres of organic crops a year in Argentina, up from 220 farmers and 13,000 acres in 1995. For the most part, people in Argentina haven’t developed a taste for the stuff — 90 percent of the country’s organic crops are exported, mostly to the U.S. and Europe. […]

This Little Farmer Went to Market

The number of farmers’ markets in the U.S. increased 63 percent from 1994 to 2000, with 19,000 farmers now selling at about 2,800 markets, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many of the farmers tout their produce as being organically certified, and farmers at the New York Greenmarket have agreed to a moratorium on […]

Scrambled Egg Labels

With few federal rules in place, many eco-labels and related markers placed on food in the U.S. are meaningless or confusing, says Consumers Union. For example, because the U.S. Agriculture Department doesn’t have standards for free-range eggs, no one checks up on whether the chickens producing such eggs really have the run of the farm. […]

Bay of Pigs' Waste

The U.S. Congress should give farmers more than $6 billion a year to help them restore wetlands and prevent agricultural waste from polluting the nation’s waterways, according to American Rivers and Environmental Defense. They said yesterday that nearly half of the country’s bays are too polluted for fishing and swimming because of fertilizer and manure […]

Residon'ts

Nearly half the fruit and vegetables sold in U.K. supermarkets since 1998 contained pesticide residues, according to an analysis of government pesticide data by Friends of the Earth. The group said most of the residues were within legal limits, but it raised concerns that the individual chemicals could be dangerous in combination, especially for unborn […]