Agriculture

"Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again."

"The Environmental Protection Agency will ban the use of a pesticide widely applied on food crops but linked to neurological damage in children, reversing one of the Trump administration’s most fraught public health decisions."

"Doctors in Haiti on Monday battled in makeshift tents to save the lives of hundreds of injured people, including young children and the elderly, outside hospitals overwhelmed by an earthquake that killed at least 1,419 people."

"The federal government on Monday declared a first-ever water shortage on the Colorado River, announcing mandatory cutbacks next year that will bring major challenges for Arizona farmers and reduce the water allotments of Nevada and Mexico."

"U.S. officials on Monday are expected to declare the first-ever water shortage from a river that serves 40 million people in the West, triggering cuts to some Arizona farmers next year amid a gripping drought."

"Soil acts as a carbon sink in the global carbon cycle because it locks away decomposed organic matter. But deforestation, various agricultural practices, and a changing climate are releasing it back into the atmosphere and oceans as carbon dioxide, resulting in an imbalance in global carbon budgets."

"Monsanto owner Bayer AG has lost another appeals court decision in the sweeping U.S. Roundup litigation, continuing to struggle to find a way out from under the crush of tens of thousands of claims alleging that Monsanto's glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer."

"The Biden administration will soon unveil a broad plan for curtailing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, climate adviser Rick Duke says, amid mounting warnings of the potent greenhouse gas role in near-term warming."

"Globally, numerous infectious diseases are being transmitted between wildlife, livestock and humans at escalating rates, including outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, dengue, HIV and others, as the threat of new emergent zoonotic diseases grows ever greater. The cost is huge in lives lost and ruined economies. The driver: human activities, particularly intrusion into wild landscapes and eating and trading wild animals."