Agriculture

"A tablespoon of soil contains billions of microscopic organisms. Life on Earth, especially the growing of food, depends on these microbes, but scientists don't even have names for most of them, much less a description."

"An administrative law judge has rejected an attempt by regulators to change Minnesota’s water quality standard for protecting wild rice, saying the proposal violates federal and state law and puts an unfair burden on Native Americans who harvest wild rice for food."

"The federal government's top fisheries experts say that three widely used pesticides — including the controversial insecticide chlorpyrifos — are jeopardizing the survival of many species of salmon, as well as orcas that feed on those salmon."

"Warmer and more unpredictable weather has made it ever more challenging to grow malt barley, a crop that must meet exacting standards before it can be brewed into beer."

"If the Environmental Protection Agency follows through with a reform now under consideration, teenage farmworkers and other working minors would once again be allowed to handle dangerous pesticides while on the job."

"Salt water creeping upland could release legacy fertilizer into the Chesapeake Bay."

"Mega-dairies are moving to Oregon, bringing concerns about their impacts on the state's rural communities, family farms, and environment."

"Short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks helped create 7,000 jobs in the Powder River Basin. Damage to water, air and land is part of the price borne by the public, too."

"More than 65 million people are displaced from their homes, the largest number since the Second World War, and nearly 25 million of them are refugees and asylum seekers living outside their own country. But that number doesn’t include people displaced by climate change."