Agriculture

"Brazilian farmers are lobbying to roll back deforestation restrictions in order to sell more soybeans to the huge Chinese market."

"In California, as wolf numbers grow — a remarkable return after a century — livestock producers are increasingly worried as these predators occasionally take down cattle."

"Global forest health has plunged to “dismal” levels and threatens the wellbeing of humanity, warns a damning report that highlights how financial systems are pouring money into land clearance and undermining efforts to reduce destruction."

"Arizona’s lax water laws let corporate farms pump unlimited groundwater to grow alfalfa for cattle overseas, even as local families spend their savings drilling new wells."

"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."