Agriculture

"Millions of women and children are at risk of losing food benefits during the shutdown. The USDA just killed the long-running survey that would track the fallout."

"Jasmín Ordóñez looks out from a wooden boat at the water as she crosses a narrow channel that connects a labyrinth of chinampas, island farms that were built by the Aztecs thousands of years ago."

"Countries in the Sahel region of Africa have made little progress on the “Great Green Wall,” a 5,000-mile-long band of trees planned for the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Even where communities are planting new trees, few seedlings actually survive, new research shows."

"Corn monocropping emits higher levels of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas which traps heat in the atmosphere more than 300 times as effectively as carbon dioxide. Simple interventions could drastically reduce emissions, experts say."

"A coalition of food, environmental and animal welfare groups is appealing a recent federal court decision that upheld a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule exempting factory farms from publicly disclosing hazardous air emissions information."

"Critics say move to axe Bill Clinton’s ‘roadless rule’ that protected key old-growth forests will be devastating to environment"

"On a rainy morning, Mike Frederick showed off the Belle Vernon Municipal Authority’s sewage treatment plant, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh."

"Alarmed by the first MAHA commission report, the agriculture industry mobilized to shape the next installment. Those efforts seemingly paid off."

"If you’re young, pregnant and Latina, chances are you live near agricultural fields sprayed with higher levels of brain-damaging organophosphate pesticides."