Agriculture

"The Biden administration this week restored Obama-era farmworker protections from pesticides that were rolled back under the Trump administration."

"House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pa.) is meeting with congressional leaders on agricultural policy Thursday to try to secure a last-minute deal on passing the farm bill."

"Drought is devastating Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and some rivers are falling to historic lows. Images of one of the Amazon River’s main tributaries, the Negro River, show just how dramatically water is dwindling."

"In 2017, two United Nations experts called for a treaty to strictly regulate dangerous pesticides, which they said were a “global human rights concern”, citing scientific research showing pesticides can cause cancers, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and other health problems. Publicly, the industry’s lead trade association dubbed the recommendations “unfounded and sensational assertions”.  In private, industry advocates have gone further."

"Wildfires have burned through 40,000 hectares (400 square kilometers) of Argentina's central farming region of Cordoba, according to officials, leaving charred cattle, houses, forests and fields in their wake."

"Factory farms in Iowa produce 109 billion pounds of waste each year, according to a new report from Food and Water Watch about concentrated livestock operations in the U.S."

"Some of the country’s biggest food companies are making a small dent in their greenhouse gas emissions, but most are failing to make substantial and critical reductions, even as consumers and government regulators are pushing harder for them to do so."

"The drilling leases in a pristine corner of Colorado seemed like a done deal. But then an unlikely alliance of cowboys and environmentalists emerged. And things changed."

"A destructive cocktail of herbicides, including a key compound in the lethal defoliant Agent Orange, is being used to chemically deforest huge areas of Brazil as ranchers there seek new, less detectable ways to clear forests for grazing cattle."