Sustainability & Climate Change
Food production needs are expected to roughly double over the next 35 years as the world population grows and people in under developed countries become more affluent and demand more calories. Healthy ecosystems are vital to the survival of all organisms. How can we grow crops without harming the environment? How can we balance technology and global food security? What is the right balance of organic and conventional farming? What role can genetics and biotechnology play without compromising the needs of tomorrow?
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Viewpoint: Agroecology and other variations on organic farming that seek to mimic nature are doomed to fail
Organic farming, regenerative agriculture, and agroecology all aim to mimic nature under the assumption that natural systems offer the best ...
How genetic breeding is revolutionizing vertical farming
In the pursuit of enhancing resource management in indoor vertical farming, the utilization of limited space becomes a critical consideration ...
Smart agriculture: African farmers urged to gradually reduce use of pesticides and fertilizers rather than abandon them to reduce risk of significant crop and economic losses
After decades of mono-cropping and overgrazing, around 65% of Africa’s farmland is now considered unproductive or degraded, leaving more than 270 million people ...
Vertical farming won’t feed the world or even the poor. So what are its advantages?
Vertical farms look hi-tech and sophisticated, but the premise is simple – plants are grown without soil, with their roots ...
The pronatalist movement: Should women be encouraged to have more children?
Pronatalism, literally meaning pro-birth, is a broad ideological movement driven by concern that the world is no longer producing enough ...
To help with climate change, carbon capture will have to evolve
More than 200 kilometers off Norway’s coast in the North Sea sits the world’s first offshore carbon-capture-and-storage project. Built in ...
Early humans are one of the few animals of that era that did not migrate when the climate cooled
Humans seem to have ... adapted to the last ice age in similar ways to wolves and bears, according to ...
Viewpoint: Dark money and straw donor schemes—How Patagonia is corrupting politics under the guise of saving our planet
The newest front in dark money’s war on election transparency shares an address with Patagonia, according to [a] complaint. The ...
8 breakthroughs in science during 2024
Scientists are making new discoveries every day. Although some may fly under the radar, many of these findings are groundbreaking ...
What defines ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ and does it deliver real benefits?
While explicit promotion of “Regenerative Agriculture” is a relatively recent trend, it’s practical implementation typically involves a combination of already ...
Extreme weather is threatening global food supplies. What can be done?
As the world grapples with the challenge of feeding a growing population against an increasingly unstable backdrop, leading journal Science ...
Viewpoint: Canada’s new greenwashing bill that bans deliberately misleading information will require anti-GM activists to take down or radically revise their websites
On June 20th, 2024, The Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023 (Bill C-59) came into effect. The Bill covers a wide ...
Video: Feed the Planet: Building a cooler relationship between an Earth for 8 billion
George Steinmetz and Andrew Revkin discuss, Building a Cooler Relationship Between People and Planet, a new book covering how humanity ...
Who will inherit our planet if—when—humans breathe their last
Our species’ relationship with the planet has been profoundly destructive. Habitat destruction, climate change, and relentless resource extraction have pushed ...
Grocery store shoppers love organic food and regenerative farming but balk at having to pay for it
Joseph Balagtas is a Purdue University professor of agriculture economics and the director of the Center for Food Demand Analysis and ...
Cow burps are one of the biggest contributors to global warming, Here is what farmers are doing to curtail methane release
The Dirt Did you know cattle can play a positive role in climate change? Farmers and ranchers are proactively working ...
Can agricultural robots cut down on weeds without chemicals or carbon-releasing tilling?
Weeds are the bane of all farmers. They compete with crops for soil moisture and nutrients and can block out ...
Why bananas are the original ‘frankenfood’
The banana has shaped civilizations and sparked scientific inquiry. From its origins in the lush forests of New Guinea to ...
What is the future of no-till farming?
No-till farming holds significant promise as a sustainable agricultural practice that can help address some of the key challenges facing ...
AI can help accelerate the transition to regenerative farming
Slightly preceding the global momentum towards regenerative agriculture has been a focus on the digitalization of agriculture. It offers benefits ...
Plants, cells, and microbes could help clean the environment but consumers seem indifferent
The challenge of our food system’s climate impact is only getting more tricky: richer countries tend to eat more meat, and ...
Hydroponics: Can growing food without soil be mass scaled?
Growing plants in water rather than soil actually uses a small fraction of the water used in traditional farming—since there’s ...
Islamic eco-systems a millennium ago supported farming in marginal desert environments but were largely abandoned. They could be sustainability models today
As global water resources become more strained, the insights gained from traditional agricultural systems could pave the way for the development of ...
We are well on our way to automating science
Many scientists are already excited about AI. In a Nature survey of 1,600 scientists published in September 2023, more than half of ...
Viewpoint: The US government and corporations are funneling billions into cover crop research to combat climate change. Is the money and the hype worth it?
Cover cropping, the practice of planting secondary crops during the off-season to improve soil health, has roots stretching back to ...
Cooling the planet one balloon at a time? Geoengineering experiment worries scientists
Luke Iseman has a plan to cool the planet, inspired by a science fiction novel, using balloons full of heat-reflecting ...
Viewpoint: New York Times’ series ‘What to Eat on a Burning Planet’ is elitist hubris (and also gets the science of climate change wrong)
Journalists, academics and policymakers often talk about the “global food system.” But if there is such a thing, it isn’t ...
