Environment

Climate change impacts could mean uncertain transformations of global agriculture systems by 2050, according to a new paper from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. …

Why did the earliest farmers in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land in western Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, domesticate some cereal crops 10,000 years ago and not others? The…

The Roman empire stretched over three continents, had 70 million people, and had a logistics and infrastructure system that kept them going for centuries. They had smart agricultural practices and an…

The European Food Safety Authority, most famous for declaring that water does not cure thirst, is now thinking about how to ban acrylamide, which is a chemical that can form in some foods during…

The $105 billion organic food industry is not terribly worried about yields. Their customers are primarily wealthy and concerned more about the perception of benefit than they are cost. But to…

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) found in flame retardant cloth, paint, adhesives and electrical transformers, have been banned since 1979, but if you live on top of a waste disposal site or you…

Honeybees pollinate a third of Australia's food crops. Losing them due to varroa might would cost the economy billions of dollars. David McClenaghan, Author provided By Gary Fitt, CSIRO A nationwide…

Take a spot that only gets 6 to 8 inches of rain per year, with erosion causing such blinding dust that there is zero visibility, and build a wheat farm. Wait, why would you do that? Washington State…

Last week, in Part I of this two part series, "Bee Deaths Mystery Solved? Neonicotinoids (Neonics) May Actually Help Bee Health”, we explored the claims by Harvard School of Public Health researcher…

Vegetable juice ice-melt?  Ice-free pavement? "Smart snowplows"?   Cold-climate researchers at Washington State University are clearing the road with 'green' alternatives to salt. Do they…