Most recent 40 articles: Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture
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Are sweet potatoes a climate-resilient crop of the future? - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Nov 23) |
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Nov 23 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
As the climate warms, hotter temperatures will make it harder to grow certain crops. But this Thanksgiving, you can give thanks for one holiday tradition that’s evolved to withstand the heat.
Harvey: “Sweet potatoes are a tropical crop, so they’re well acclimated to that heat. They prefer heat.”
Lorin Harvey is a sweet potato specialist at Mississippi State University Extension. His state grows almost 500 million pounds of sweet potatoes a year, topped only by North Carolina and California.
He says because of their heat tolerance, ... Read more ...
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Warming winters threaten a unique dessert cider - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Nov 22) |
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Nov 22 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
After a holiday feast of turkey and cranberries, some people enjoy a small glass of ice cider.
Léger: “It is a sweet dessert wine style of alcoholic cider … and it’s the perfect ending for all the Thanksgiving things.”
Eleanor Léger is co-founder of Vermont-based Eden Ciders. She says the beverage is made possible by cold northern winters.
In late fall, her team presses apples into juice, and they leave it outside in large barrels. As temperatures drop, the water in the juice freezes.
Léger: “And all the heavier molecules - sugars, ... Read more ...
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Wild spring weather swings hurt New York’s fall apple harvest - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Nov 2) |
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Nov 2 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Apple season is winding down in New York’s Finger Lakes Region. And would-be pickers may have found less fruit than usual this year.
A warm spell in the early spring lured fruit trees out of their winter dormancy.
Then, on May 18, temperatures plunged into the mid-20s, killing blossoms and baby fruit.
Stoscheck: “We lost 100% of our crop, for all intents and purposes.”
That’s Autumn Stoscheck. She and her husband own Eve’s Cidery and grow more than 50 varieties of apples.
She says this year’s late frost was extreme. But as the ... Read more ...
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Climate change may lead to a timing mismatch between wild bees and fruit trees - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Oct 17) |
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Oct 17 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Growing up in Kent, nicknamed the “Garden of England,” Chris Wyver was surrounded by apple and pear orchards, and he always noticed the native bees that zigzagged through the orchards every year, cross-pollinating the fruit trees when they blossomed.
Now, Wyver is a Ph.D. student at the University of Reading, studying how climate change is affecting bees and their crucial role in transferring pollen between trees to help them produce robust fruit. He and his colleagues have observed that warming temperatures have prompted many wild bees to start ... Read more ...
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With whales in trouble, conservationists, fishers, and others team up to protect them - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Oct 11) |
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Oct 11 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Dick Ogg usually operates his commercial crab fishing boat F/V Karen Jeanne based out of Bodega Bay, about 40 miles northwest of San Francisco, but recently he’s also been spending some of his time in a plane looking for whales. Ogg’s work is part of a state program that seeks to help both fishery workers and whales adapt to the changing climate and warming oceans.
Climate change is amplifying conflicts between humans and wildlife, according to a recent Nature Climate Change study. One of these conflicts has put endangered marine animals, including ... Read more ...
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Idaho group helps protect farmworkers from heat and smoke - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 22) |
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Sep 22 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Being outside in the hot sun can be uncomfortable and dangerous. But some farmworkers remain in the fields, even when temperatures soar.
“If you’re not working, you’re not making money, and so then you’re not putting food on your table,” says Irene Ruiz, a former farmworker and co-founder of the Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance, a coalition to support immigrant communities in the state.
She says many farmworkers are also exposed when wildfire smoke causes unhealthy levels of air pollution. And as the climate changes, the risks ... Read more ...
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Dust Bowl redux? - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 1) |
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Sep 1 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In the 1930s, dust and drought enveloped the U.S. Southern Plains, inducing widespread famine. Livestock and crops were choked by storms that killed nearly 7,000 people and caused severe damage to the local ecology and national economy.
Today, climate change is putting the U.S. food supply at risk in ways reminiscent of the Depression-era Dust Bowl. Extreme shifts in weather patterns are altering how crops grow and endangering yields and food security. And as the symptoms mirror the past, so too could the treatment.
In the years after the Dust ... Read more ...
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What it’s like to sue the government over climate change (she won) - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Aug 29) |
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Aug 29 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
When Rikki Held was younger, climate change seemed like something that happened to the other side of the world - or to polar bears. But the issue turned personal when drought, floods, and wildfires began to harm her family’s ranch and hotel business in southeastern Montana.
In 2020, she joined 16 other young people in Montana to file a lawsuit against the state for violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthful environment by contributing to climate change through its continued extraction of fossil fuels.
In August 2023, the judge ... Read more ...
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Opinion: Puerto Rican farmers should have the opportunity to access USDA programs in Spanish - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Aug 10) |
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Aug 10 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
[Leer en español]
For more than a month, I’ve been trying to get a hold of someone at the United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency’s Puerto Rico state office. Someone told me they passed my message to the director. I also sent emails to various employees, with no response.
I wanted to get in touch with the office after hearing from a farmer that most of the agency’s paperwork is in English and that agents are hard to reach. My experience was a case in point - an example of how hard it is for farmers in Puerto Rico to get help ... Read more ...
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EV charging stations to roll out at fast food restaurants in California - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jul 26) |
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Jul 26 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
At a Taco Bell in South San Francisco, diners can now plug in their electric cars while grabbing a burrito.
“Our chargers provide a 100% charge within 15 to 20 minutes, so they can come, park their car, charge up their car, get something to eat, and leave,” says Sharmila Ravula of ChargeNet Stations.
The company is partnering with fast food restaurants across California to install EV charging stations in their parking lots.
The stations will be paired with on-site solar panels and in some cases battery storage.
“The solar energy is ... Read more ...
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Many consumers find food labels confusing, contributing to food waste - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jun 26) |
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Jun 26 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
When you find uncooked food lurking in your fridge, you might throw it out if the date on the package has passed. But perhaps you shouldn’t.
“There’s been a lot of confusion about how to interpret these labels. Like, we call them expiration dates, but they’re actually not necessarily expiration dates,” says Anjali Narang, a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University.
She says the date does not always indicate food safety. Sometimes it indicates when a product’s quality is best. But knowing what’s meant is often confusing because the ... Read more ...
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The sun powers a Syracuse community farm - in more ways than one - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jun 09, 2023) |
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Jun 09, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
On a community farm near Syracuse, New York, the sun helps vegetables grow and powers a new pavilion where farmers wash, pack, and store their produce.
Salt City Harvest Farm was created 10 years ago as a place where refugees to the area could farm. People from Nepal, Bhutan, Somalia, and elsewhere grow diverse crops on the land, including some that are hard to come by in Central New York, like bitter melon, daikon radishes, and purple yard-long beans.
“They’re growing for their own consumption and they’re growing for their community’s ... Read more ...
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How one strawberry farmer is coping with erratic weather in California - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (May 11, 2023) |
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May 11, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Each November, Javier Zamora plants more than 20 acres of strawberries on his organic fruit and vegetable farm in Watsonville, California.
“And then four months later, you get to see people enjoy and take a bite out of a red, delicious strawberry,” he says.
Watsonville is in a cool, coastal region that Zamora says is known for its long, productive strawberry seasons.
He can typically harvest berries from April through October.
But as the climate warms, the weather is growing increasingly erratic. Heat waves and drought can reduce ... Read more ...
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How climate change is affecting Africa - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (May 01, 2023) |
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May 01, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
The continent of Africa is more than large enough to hold three USAs, including Hawaii and Alaska. With its 54 countries, it trails only Asia in area and population. Though people living in Africa have contributed little to the problem, in every scenario with more than 1.5°C warming, their continent is the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Yet these effects remain seriously underreported in English-language Western news. Google Africa climate change or Africa climate action and nearly every link will be to an institution of some sort ... Read more ...
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Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Apr 20, 2023) |
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Apr 20, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
While recent federal bills have advanced climate solutions through the lenses of infrastructure, electricity production, and transportation, policymakers are now turning their attention to another major source of planet-heating emissions: the food system. In its March 2023 report on U.S. biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovation, the White House emphasized a coming focus on climate-centric agriculture. In February, a group of House representatives launched a task force to ensure that the 2023 farm bill contains strong climate provisions.
In 2018, ... Read more ...
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‘It Breaks My Heart’: Costa Rica’s coffee communities challenged by climate change - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Apr 17, 2023) |
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Apr 17, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
For Diana Vargas Hernández, a daughter of coffee farmers in Puntarenas, a sprawling province spanning most of the Central American country’s Pacific coast, the annual coffee bean harvest has always been a part of her life. “Growing up I remember how crazy it was trying to pick all of the fruits before they went bad or the birds ate them all,” she said.
But today, Diana’s family is facing a crisis. “Now I hear my parents discussing the decrease in [coffee] yields and issues with fungal pathogens that may force them to give up on the farm and it breaks ... Read more ...
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Science tackles the West’s megadrought - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Apr 07, 2023) |
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Apr 07, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Taps ran dry in Rio Verde on New Year’s Day.
Water had to be trucked in for household use in the affluent suburb outside Scottsdale, Arizona. The approximately 1,000 residents of the large, suburban stucco homes of Rio Verde were forced to take shorter showers and eat from paper plates.
Though the politics behind the water shut-off are complex, the crisis highlighted the impacts of climate change and the 23-year drought it has fueled in the West.
Forty million people in the southwestern United States rely on the Colorado River. Elsewhere in ... Read more ...
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How seed diversity can help protect our food as the world warms - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Mar 30, 2023) |
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Mar 30, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Planting seeds is a radically hopeful act. Sowing a seed is predicated on the idea that there will be a future - one that will support and nurture the seed.
Join young documentary filmmaker and climate storyteller Charly Frisk as she travels across Nordic regions to meet with people who are working to preserve the diversity of the world’s seeds. She encounters seed savers recovering ancient varieties from older generations, visits farmer’s markets that are revitalizing old traditions, and tours gene banks that are working at the intersection of science ... Read more ...
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Climate change takes toll on traditional Ojibwe wild rice harvest - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Feb 15, 2023) |
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Feb 15, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
For hundreds of years, Ojibwe people have harvested wild rice in the lakes and rivers of the Upper Midwest. They migrated there in search of a place - foretold by Anishinaabe prophecy - where food grows on water.
“Wild rice is an aquatic grass, and so it grows in the water, and we harvest it with our canoes,” says Jerry Jondreau.
Jondreau and his partner Katy Bresette own Dynamite Hill Farms. The Michigan-based business produces wild rice, maple sugar, and other traditional Ojibwe foods.
Each fall, Jondreau travels to Minnesota to harvest ... Read more ...
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North Carolina has suffered disastrous floods. Could farmers help? - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jan 06, 2023) |
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Jan 06, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
Fran. Floyd. Mathew. Florence. Dorian. Over the past decade, hurricanes have devastated parts of North Carolina. And many inland communities in the flood plain continue to struggle.
“People talk about how they would recover, move somewhere else, try to rebuild, and then get flooded out again in a whole 'nother town,” says Michelle Lovejoy of the Environmental Defense Fund. “And it’s very, very traumatic, and it makes it very difficult for them to really put the pieces of their lives back together.”
Lovejoy says that as climate change brings more heavy rain, the risks will grow, so solutions are urgently needed.
That could mean ... Read more ...
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Discarded oyster shells used to build new reefs in coastal Louisiana - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Dec 28, 2022) |
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Dec 28, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
You’ll find oysters on the menu of most seafood restaurants in Louisiana. The state produces up to 14 million pounds of oyster meat every year.
But this juicy meat comes in hard, inedible shells.
“Oyster shells were just going into landfill,” says Darrah Bach, who coordinates the oyster shell recycling program at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
Her group is collecting discarded shells from restaurants and using them to build new oyster reefs instead.
She says the reefs provide critical habitat for fish, shrimp, and other creatures. And they help protect Louisiana’s coasts from extreme storms.
“Oyster reefs are ... Read more ...
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Confusion over food labels creates unnecessary waste and pollution - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Dec 12, 2022) |
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Dec 12, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Sell by. Use by. Best before. Lots of phrases appear on food labels, and it’s often unclear what they mean.
“People think that the dates on food are telling them to throw the food out,” says Dana Gunders, director of ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing food waste.
She says that in many cases, companies actually use date labels to indicate when a product is at its very best.
“They’re really trying to guarantee when their brand is at its top quality, when it’s freshest, but not that if you eat the product after that date you’ll get sick or it’s going to go bad,” Gunders says.
She says this misunderstanding leads to a lot of ... Read more ...
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An idea that could help replenish California’s groundwater supplies - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Dec 02, 2022) |
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Dec 02, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
When drought strikes, California farmers often pump water from underground aquifers to water their crops. But increasingly dry conditions are straining that resource.
“On average, over time, we have been extracting more water from the subsurface than has been recharged,” says David Freyberg of Stanford University.
He says many people are looking at ways to replenish the state’s dwindling groundwater supplies.
In California, a lot of water typically comes from winter snow that falls high in the mountains. During warmer months, that snow melts and trickles down to farmland.
But as the climate warms, more precipitation is falling ... Read more ...
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How to reduce food waste from your Thanksgiving feast - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Nov 24, 2022) |
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Nov 24, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
On Thanksgiving morning, the smell of roasting turkey wafts through many people’s homes. And they eagerly await their first bites of the holiday feast.
A week later, they may find their fridge still stacked with leftovers. So they dump the remaining green beans, turkey, and stuffing in the trash.
“We estimate that around 300 million pounds of food go to waste over the Thanksgiving period,” says Dana Gunders of the nonprofit ReFED.
She explains that food waste is a major contributor to global warming.
Wasting food means more is grown, processed, and transported than needed. Every step of that process can contribute to climate change. Read more ...
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California ranch works to replenish groundwater supplies - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Oct 25, 2022) |
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Oct 25, 2022 · Join the Yale Center for Environmental Communication for a webinar on November 4, at 12 p.m. EDT. Panelists will discuss the health and community impacts of more frequent and large wildfires. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Kai Chen, Yale School of Public Health.
Yale Climate Connections
California farms grow about a quarter of U.S. food, and that takes a lot of water. Many farmers rely on water pumped from the ground. But over time, pumping is depleting the aquifers. And severe droughts are making the problem worse.
“Eventually, you’re going to run out of water,” says Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch in California’s ... Read more ...
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Extreme heat waves are stunting kids’ growth in West Africa, study finds - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Oct 13, 2022) |
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Oct 13, 2022 · Join the Yale Center for Environmental Communication for a webinar on November 4, at 12 p.m. EDT. Panelists will discuss the health and community impacts of more frequent and large wildfires. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Kai Chen, Yale School of Public Health.
Yale Climate Connections
A recent study of children in West Africa shows that extreme heat can worsen malnutrition and, over time, stunt kids’ growth.
The reasons are complex. Extreme heat can cause crop failures that reduce the availability of food and increase poverty, and it can increase the prevalence of disease.
“So we took kind of a step back and looked at how extreme heat is ... Read more ...
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'Fighting for inches’ in the Southeast’s struggle with salt - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 23, 2022) |
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Sep 23, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
At age 61, wading through swampy rows of submerged plants and trying not to step on any cottonmouth snakes, Rollen Chalmers farms his family’s legacy in rice. He makes his living on the Turnbridge Plantation in his hometown of Hardeeville, South Carolina, 30 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. For 16 years he’s grown Carolina Gold Rice, a sweet species brought in the slave trade from West Africa’s “Rice Coast.” Today, Carolina Gold is cultivated by only a handful of small-scale farmers.
Chalmers, a Gullah Geechee farmer with 30 acres, is among the largest of them. How much longer he’s able to farm remains a question. Saltwater intrusion on Chalmers’ ... Read more ...
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App helps California volunteers prevent food waste - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 22, 2022) |
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Sep 22, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Many people struggle to afford food. But every day, grocery stores and restaurants toss tons of unsold food in the trash. From there, it ends up in landfills, where it decomposes and releases methane, a potent climate-warming gas.
So to fight both food insecurity and climate change, California is starting to require businesses to donate unsold food, such as produce and pastries, to food banks or other service organizations.
“That’s great. But it requires some innovation and some tweaks in the food system to be able to accommodate that,” says Sheila McQuaid of the 530 Food Rescue Coalition in northern California.
Her group matches food ... Read more ...
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San Francisco restaurant turns food waste into pizza - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 12, 2022) |
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Sep 12, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
At a new pizzeria in San Francisco, diners sit beneath disco balls and fringed lights, sip wine, chat with friends, and eat food made with ingredients that usually end up in the dumpster.
“From our dough all the way up into the toppings, there is food waste in absolutely every single pie,” says chef David Murphy.
Murphy and Kayla Abe own Shuggie’s Trash Pie and Natural Wine.
Murphy makes dough using spent oats from an oat milk manufacturer and whey, a byproduct of cheese-making. He tops pies with blemished produce and incorporates off-cuts of meat and fish.
“The tuna belly, the fish collar, the fish head, the bones: All these ... Read more ...
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Ag’s challenging future in a changing climate - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 07, 2022) |
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Sep 07, 2022 · Get the latest hurricane news, analysis, and unique perspectives from Yale Climate Connections meteorologists Jeff Masters, Ph.D., and Bob Henson.
Yale Climate Connections
Increased drought and extreme heat adversely affecting agriculture likely pose the highest threat to civilization over the next 40 years. The greatest danger: extreme droughts supercharged by climate change, affecting multiple grain-growing areas simultaneously, causing “food shock” events that could trigger food prices spikes leading to mass starvation, war, and a severe global economic recession. And the odds of such a globe-shaking food shock event are steadily increasing as humans burn fossil fuels ... Read more ...
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Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 06, 2022) |
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Sep 06, 2022 · Get the latest hurricane news, analysis, and unique perspectives from Yale Climate Connections meteorologists Jeff Masters, Ph.D., and Bob Henson.
Yale Climate Connections
Crops don’t like drought, extreme heat, extreme cold, flooding, and air pollution. While reducing the ill effects of extreme cold on agriculture in recent decades, the warming climate is increasing impacts of drought, extreme heat, and air pollution. These increased impacts are greatly concerning as the world envisions feeding an additional two billion people by 2050. Of particular concern are changes in the atmospheric circulation – which may have both natural and human-caused components – that have ... Read more ...
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California’s drought dries up steady work for farmworkers - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Sep 02, 2022) |
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Sep 02, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
In California’s Central Valley, farmworkers used to find steady, long-term employment planting and harvesting grapes, tomatoes, nuts, alfalfa, and other crops. This meant that they and their families could set down roots in the community.
But California is in the midst of a severe drought. The lack of water has forced farm managers to leave some fields unplanted, so there’s less work available.
“Nowadays, it’s becoming very rare that you have work year-round as a farmworker,” says Hernan Hernandez, who directs the California Farmworker Foundation. He says some workers have had to move away.
“You hear individuals that are now leaving ... Read more ...
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Extreme drought cuts into Montana rancher’s profits - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Aug 17, 2022) |
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Aug 17, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Walter Schweitzer breeds and raises Black Angus beef cattle on his ranch in central Montana. And he grows hay to feed his cows and sell to other ranchers.
“I generally sell about 1,000 ton of hay a year and produce all my own feed for our cattle,” he says.
But in 2021, a severe drought dramatically reduced both the quantity and quality of his hay crop.
“Because of the drought, we didn’t sell any hay and barely had enough hay to get our own cattle through the winter,” he says.
This spring, drought conditions continued, and he was worried he would not have enough hay and grass to feed his cattle later in the season. So he sold off ... Read more ...
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Bill would provide relief to farmworkers in drought-stricken California - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Aug 11, 2022) |
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Aug 11, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
About a quarter of the nation’s food is produced in California’s Central Valley. And for decades, people have come to the region to find jobs in agriculture.
State senator Melissa Hurtado says her parents immigrated there from Mexico.
“They came to the Central Valley in search of the American dream. What they had heard is that the Central Valley was the place where you can make that happen,” she says. “And this region provided that to them.”
But as climate change brings hotter, drier conditions, the American dream is getting harder to achieve in the Valley.
Because of severe drought the past few years, farmers have left some ... Read more ...
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Three-quarters of Montana farmers, ranchers anxious about climate change, survey finds - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jul 18, 2022) |
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Jul 18, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Farming can be a stressful profession, and it’s getting more so as climate change brings increasingly severe weather.
Drought and extreme heat can damage crops. Heavy rain can flood fields and cause fungal growth. A late cold snap can kill young plants.
Paul Lachapelle of Montana State University says the growing risks and uncertainty are taking a toll on farmers’ and ranchers’ mental health.
He and co-researchers surveyed about 120 Montana farmers and ranchers.
“Nearly three quarters noted they were experiencing moderate to high levels of anxiety when thinking about climate change and its effects on their agricultural ... Read more ...
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The downside of corporate reforestation pledges - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jul 06, 2022) |
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Jul 06, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Many big companies have pledged to offset some of their carbon pollution by investing in tree planting projects.
“There’s obviously been a lot of attention on the fact that nature-based solutions can play a huge role in tackling the climate crisis, and we absolutely agree,” says Aditi Sen, former climate policy lead with Oxfam America.
She warns that large-scale reforestation must be done carefully.
She says vastamounts of land around the world will be required if all these companies make good on their promises.
Sen co-authored a recent Oxfam report that assessed the 2050 carbon offset goals of four major energy ... Read more ...
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In silvopasture, cows and sheep coexist with trees - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Jun 03, 2022) |
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Jun 03, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Cows and sheep usually graze in open fields. But at Fiddle Creek Dairy in Pennsylvania, cows graze among wide rows of trees.
Austin Unruh is owner and founder of a company called Trees for Graziers. He helped the dairy plant about 3,000 trees across 25 acres of pasture.
The approach is called silvopasture, and it helps the farmer and the environment.
“Most of the farms that we work with have a real need for additional shade,” Unruh says.
So he selects fast-growing trees and positions them so that they’ll provide dappled shade to keep livestock cool in summer. And he plants species that provide food for the animals, ... Read more ...
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Worm composting, a climate-friendly alternative to the landfill - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (May 23, 2022) |
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May 23, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Under the kitchen sink, tucked between trash bags and cleaning products, some people keep a bin of worms. The worms eat fruit and vegetable scraps and leave behind nutrient-rich compost that can be used to nourish houseplants.
Jennifer Roberts of the University of California Cooperative Extension says this method of composting is called vermicomposting, and it can work well for people with limited space.
“An average family of four … can compost all their food scraps with one worm bin that’s about one-and-a-half feet by one-and-a-half feet,” Roberts says.
The stars of the show are red wiggler worms, which can be bought online or at ... Read more ...
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California’s Terranova Ranch is getting ready for large electric farm equipment - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Apr 27, 2022) |
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Apr 27, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
On farms across the country, diesel tractors emit carbon dioxide and other air pollution.
So Don Cameron, general manager of Terranova Ranch in California, wants all of his farm’s tractors to run on electricity.
“I think the possibility is out there to really electrify almost every piece of equipment that we run on farm,” he says.
The farm has already invested in small electric utility vehicles. But large electric tractors and other heavy-duty farm equipment are not on the market yet.
Big machines require a lot of power. So to keep them running all day would take a lot of battery storage, which is expensive and heavy.
But ... Read more ...
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What a researcher learned from monitoring Atlanta’s tree canopy - Yale Climate Connections - Agriculture (Mar 14, 2022) |
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Mar 14, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Mature trees store a lot of carbon, so they help reduce global warming. And they provide cooling shade, soak up stormwater, and help purify the air.
So it’s important for cities to know how many trees they have, where they are, and how they’re changing.
Tony Giarrusso at the Georgia Institute of Technology has been monitoring tree cover in Atlanta for more than a decade.
He uses satellite imagery and mapping software to estimate the extent of the city’s tree canopy: “the branches and leaves and trees as seen from above, like out of a plane,” he says.
But he also dives deeper to see what’s happening at the neighborhood ... Read more ...
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