The Society of Environmental Journalists will partner in the launch of a new Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk in partnership with Report for America and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and supported with a $1.4 million, three-year grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Find out more about the initiative and how journalists can get involved.
"The Gila was once a vibrant desert river, providing a lifeline for the riparian habitat and wildlife that depended on it in the U.S. Southwest. But population growth, agricultural withdrawals, and, increasingly, climate change have badly diminished the river and threaten its future."
"A long-term drought that has hit two-thirds of Mexico looks set to worsen in coming weeks, with forecasts warning of high temperatures, crop damage and water supply shortages on the horizon, including in the populous capital."
"In Madagascar, hunger has already left people eating raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves, even the very locusts that helped decimate crops. The southern part of the country is experiencing its worst drought in decades, with the World Food Program warning that 1.14 million people are food-insecure and 400,000 people are headed toward starvation."
"For thousands of years, an Arizona tribe relied on the Colorado River's natural flooding patterns to farm. Later, it hand-dug ditches and canals to route water to fields."
"The Biden administration announced Tuesday it will issue new rules for defining when meat can be labeled a "product of USA" in an effort to boost American farmers."
"The United States and Mexico are tussling over their dwindling shared water supplies after years of unprecedented heat and insufficient rainfall."
"Maine’s beloved wild blueberry fields are home to one of the most important fruit crops in New England, and scientists have found they are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the state."
"They’re arriving in swarms so dense it can appear the earth is moving. They’re covering roads and fields, pelting ATV riders, and steadily devouring grains and grass to the bedevilment of farmers and ranchers. A massive population of grasshoppers is proliferating in the sweltering American west, where a deep drought has made for ideal conditions for grasshopper eggs to hatch and survive into adulthood."
"A new analysis of more than 50 previously secret, corporate-backed scientific studies is raising troubling questions about a history of regulatory reliance on such research in assessing the safety of the widely used weedkilling chemical known as glyphosate, the key ingredient in the popular Roundup herbicide."
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