Tag Archives: agriculture

Locusts and coronavirus: A Biblical nightmare strikes the horn of Africa

What if COVID-19 had shown up in the United States last year, just as Hurricane Dorian forced people out of their homes and into shelters? What would it feel like to be told to shelter in place as wildfires approach your doorstep? It’s hard to imagine handling more than one disaster of this magnitude — but before the novel coronavirus struck the horn of Africa, countries already had a plague on their hands.

Toward the end of last year, swarms of desert locusts began flooding the region in numbers not seen in decades. Unusually wet weather over the previous 18 months — likely linked to climate change — created ideal breeding conditions for the insects. Since then, the swarms have multiplied across ten countries as continued rain during what is typically the dry season allowed each new wave of the insects to breed. The plague is especially threatening in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Desert locusts are voracious eaters who travel in swarms the size of cities and will devastate crops, pastures, and forests if they aren’t controlled, posing a major threat to food security in countries where already 20 million people are food-insecure.

Despite the alarming numbers of swarms, they have not dramatically impacted the food supply yet, according to Cyril Ferrand, the East Africa resilience team leader for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). When the locusts arrived in full force in late December, farmers had already secured their seasonal harvest.

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“Our concern is for the season to come,” Ferrand told Grist. Farmers are beginning to plant now for the June/July harvest, just as a new generation of locusts are starting to mature. “There could be up to 100 percent losses,” said Ferrand. “That’s very clear.”

To kill as many locusts as possible, time is of the essence. That’s why Ferrand raised the alarm two weeks ago when a shipment of pesticides to Kenya was delayed due to coronavirus-related flight restrictions. When Grist spoke to him on Friday, he said the stock had been replenished, and that COVID-19 has not been a major impediment to control efforts yet.

In Kenya, where Ferrand is based, there have been under 200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 so far. Social distancing measures are in effect, and masks are mandatory in public places, but the country has declared controlling the locusts a national priority, so spraying and surveying have not slowed down.

The FAO began coordinating aid to affected countries in January and is trying to raise $153 million for control operations as well as to safeguard livelihoods. $114 million has been raised so far. On the control side, the organization provides pesticides and spraying equipment, including planes and trucks, as well as training to conduct surveillance and keep track of where swarms are moving.

But controlling the swarms is a sisyphean task.

“The locust infestation is happening in a very wide area, and you find that every time you are trying to control in one region, there’s another swarm that is happening in a different region,” said Ambrose Ngetich, an FAO project officer in a video produced by the organization. “It is not possible to control them simultaneously, because most of the time they are at different stages.”

Locusts bury their eggs 4-6 inches underground. Once they are laid, spraying cannot prevent a new generation from hatching.

Losses to crops and ranchlands are inevitable. That’s why the FAO also plans to provide cash to affected communities to buy food, compensate farmers so that they can purchase seed for the next planting season, and supply feed to livestock farmers whose pastures get devoured.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not slowed the battle to stop the locusts yet, but if the outbreak becomes more severe and countries begin implementing stricter lockdowns, it could bring control operations to a halt.

“We are talking about a region that is very fragile,” said Ferrand. “After the health impact, the economic one could be extremely severe for a long period of time.”

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Locusts and coronavirus: A Biblical nightmare strikes the horn of Africa

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This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm – Ted Genoways

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This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm

Ted Genoways

Genre: Agriculture

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 19, 2017

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Winner of the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize 2019 selection for the One Book One Nebraska and All Iowa state reading programs "Genoways gives the reader a kitchen-table view of the vagaries, complexities, and frustrations of modern farming…Insightful and empathetic." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, and yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a farm, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife’s fifth-generation homestead in Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their family farm—and their entire way of life—are under siege on many fronts, from shifting trade policies, to encroaching pipelines, to climate change. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores the rapidly changing world of small, traditional farming operations. He creates a vivid, nuanced portrait of a radical new landscape and one family’s fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love.

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This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm – Ted Genoways

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The U.N. report calls for better farming. Which 2020 candidates have a plan for that?

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The U.N. report calls for better farming. Which 2020 candidates have a plan for that?

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Nearly 100 percent of Trump funds designed to help farmers went to white farmers

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Nearly 100 percent of Trump funds designed to help farmers went to white farmers

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Cargill promised to end deforestation. It’s telling farmers something else.

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Cargill promised to end deforestation. It’s telling farmers something else.

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Those honeybees you’re so worried about? They’re killing off wild bee species.

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Those honeybees you’re so worried about? They’re killing off wild bee species.

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The Dreamt Land – Mark Arax

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The Dreamt Land

Chasing Water and Dust Across California

Mark Arax

Genre: Nature

Price: $15.99

Publish Date: May 21, 2019

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


"You can't understand California without understanding water, and no one is better at doing that than Mark Arax, whose depth of knowledge about the Central Valley is organic and unparalleled. Plus, he writes like a dream." –Mark Bittman, author of Food Matters A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil–the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it–from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers–the nut king, grape king and citrus queen–tell their story here for the first time. This is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses. Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

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The Dreamt Land – Mark Arax

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Why Regenerative Agriculture is the Future of Food

As we face an ever-growing need to combat climate change, many people around the world are looking at how we produce our food. Agriculture has a strong effect on climate change (and vice versa). While some methods contribute to higher pollution and environmental degradation, others actually have the potential to reverse climate change. And one of those practices is regenerative agriculture.

Defining regenerative agriculture

The Regenerative Agriculture Initiative of California State University, Chico and The Carbon Underground ? in conjunction with several other companies and organizations ? worked together to create a definition for regenerative agriculture. The goal was to give a basic meaning to the relatively new term and to prevent it from being ?watered down,? according to The Carbon Underground.

??Regenerative Agriculture? describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity ? resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle,? the definition reads. ?Specifically, Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density.?

According to Regeneration International, the objective is to continuously improve the land, ?using technologies that regenerate and revitalize the soil and the environment.? The practice also helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions ? a key factor in battling climate change. In a nutshell, farmers aim to leave the environment better than when they found it.

Although many of regenerative agriculture?s core tenets are similar to organic farming, the practices are not synonymous. Both farming methods do discourage the use of synthetic chemicals, though regenerative farmers might not necessarily be certified organic. And organic agriculture doesn?t guarantee a carbon drawdown, according to The Carbon Underground. Plus, unlike organic food, there?s no certification yet for regenerative products ? though a pilot program is in the works for farmers who practice regenerative agriculture.

Regenerative agriculture practices

Credit: valentinrussanov/Getty Images

So what exactly do regenerative farmers do? The Regenerative Agriculture Initiative-The Carbon Underground definition lays out four main practices.

1. Contribute to soil building and fertility.

Regenerative agriculture discourages soil tillage. ?Tillage breaks up (pulverizes) soil aggregation and fungal communities while adding excess O2 to the soil for increased respiration and CO2 emission,? the definition document says. Besides carbon loss, it can lead to soil erosion and increased water runoff. Furthermore, farmers increase soil fertility through biological methods, including the use of cover crops, crop rotation, compost and manure. They avoid synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which can create an imbalance in the soil?s microbiome, diminish nutrients and lead to weaker plants.

2. Improve water cleanliness and retention.

Avoiding synthetic chemicals also makes for less water pollution ? another core tenet of regenerative agriculture. Farmers have efficient irrigation systems to optimize water use and prevent contamination. Plus, as farmers work to improve the soil, this increases its ability for water retention. Among many other factors, limiting tillage is one practice that enhances water infiltration and retention.

3. Increase biodiversity, and boost the health of the ecosystem.

Regenerative farmers aim to protect natural ecosystems. ?Building biological ecosystem diversity begins with inoculation of soils with composts or compost extracts to restore soil microbial community population, structure and functionality,? according to the definition document. Again, farmers avoid synthetic chemicals on which plants can become dependent and fail to thrive naturally. They take soil samples to guide them in finding the right nutrient balance. And they use plants to attract beneficial insects.

4. Lessen CO2 emissions by diverting carbon back into the soil.

As regenerative farmers carefully manage their land and promote a healthy, natural ecosystem, it helps to increase carbon in the soil and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Plus, the farmers? avoidance of synthetic chemicals also helps to combat climate change, as they?re often produced using high levels of fossil fuels. As for livestock, regenerative agriculture involves well-managed grazing practices that lead to better land, healthier animals and lower carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

What?s in it for us?

Credit: alle12/Getty Images

Regenerative agriculture offers several benefits to the global population ? and even noticeable ones to us as individuals. These are just a few, according to Regeneration International.

Boosts food?s nutrition

Regenerative agriculture tends to produce healthy, resilient plants. And as consumers, we benefit from this with more nutritious food. The nutrient-dense soil passes on that nourishment to the crops ? and our bodies. Plus, thanks to farmers nurturing the natural ecosystem, it?s better able to filter out pollution and chemicals from our food.

Restores nature

Regenerative agriculture is just that ? regenerative. Its methods help to improve biodiversity, which ?is fundamental to agricultural production and food security, as well as a valuable ingredient of environmental conservation,? according to Regeneration International. Plus, the farmers? grazing strategies work to restore grasslands that have been degraded.

Benefits local economics

Family farmers have taken a key role in regenerative agriculture. These are people who have a strong working knowledge of their local land and how best to sustainably manage it. So support of regenerative agriculture benefits these farmers and their local economies. Plus, keeping them in business means preserving the more traditional, environmentally friendly farming practices that go back generations.

Combats climate change

Agriculture is a major contributor to climate change around the world. ?The current industrial food system is responsible for 44 to 57% of all global greenhouse gas emissions,? Regeneration International says. But regenerative agriculture has the potential to reverse this damage. Not only does it contribute lower emissions than conventional farming, but it has the ability to sequester more carbon in the soil, rather than in our atmosphere.

Feeds the global population

As the global population grows, food production will have to adjust one way or another. Continuing to use conventional farming methods likely would mean more deforestation ? and higher greenhouse gas emissions. But shifting to more widespread use of regenerative agriculture could lessen that blow. Regenerative farming conditions work to naturally protect crops from disease, pests, drought and more. This improves yields without having to add chemicals or other factors that can harm the environment. Thus, it could be a way to sustainably feed the global population for generations to come.

Main image credit: stevanovicigor/Getty Images

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Americans have planted so much corn that it’s changing the weather

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This story was originally published by Atlas Obscura and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Corn farmers in eastern Nebraska have long claimed weather patterns are changing, but in an unexpected way.

“It’s something I’ve talked about with my dad and granddad many times,” says fifth-generation corn farmer Brandon Hunnicutt. Along with his father and brother, the 45 year old lives in the 400-person village of Giltner and grows about 2,000 acres of corn each year. From above, the area looks like a blip of homes surrounded by an expansive grid of circular fields. Though Brandon’s grandfather is retired, he takes an active interest in the business. “Contrary to what you’d think should be happening, both him and my dad swear up and down [that] droughts used to come more often and be a lot worse,” says Hunnicutt. “Considering it’s been 30 years since we had a really bad one, I’ve started kind of taking them at their word.”

This is not the only noticeable development — University of Nebraska climatologists say the growing season has gotten 10-14 days longer since 1980. Hunnicutt now waits until the first weeks of November to pilot his 40-foot-wide, dump-truck-sized combine through the farm’s widely arching, seemingly endless rows of corn — enough to cover 800 city blocks.

Though subtle, the Hunnicutts have noticed these changes and more.

“To be successful in this business, you’ve got to pay close attention to the weather,” explains Brandon. In the past 20 years, on top of the above, he’s noted a gradual decrease in 100-degree days during the summer. “That missing digit isn’t something you overlook,” he asserts with a laugh. “High temperatures create a lot of anxiety. If they go on long enough, they’ll scorch your corn and put a hurtin’ on your bottom line!”

A 2018 report issued by climate researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims to have solved the mystery and verified farmers’ suspicions: Namely, that large-scale corn production has changed the weather.

Over the past 70 years, farmers in America’s midwestern Corn Belt have made vast leaps in production. From 1950 to 2010, annual harvests increased by more than 400 percent, jumping from 2 billion to 10 billion bushels. In addition to making the area the world’s most productive agricultural region, climate scientists at MIT say the boom has created its own weather patterns.

“We studied data from the past 30 years and found that the intensification of corn production has increased average summer rainfalls by about 35 percent and decreased [average summer] temperatures by as much as one degree Celsius,” says former MIT researcher Ross E. Alter, now a research meteorologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Alter was the lead author of a 2018 report published in the journal of the American Geophysical Union that demonstrated how land use has impacted the region’s climate more than greenhouse gas emissions. “What makes these findings so fascinating is that, while global temperatures have risen, areas like eastern Nebraska have actually cooled,” continues Alter, referring to yearly averages. “We think it’s likely heavy agriculture counteracted rising summer temperatures that might have otherwise resulted from increasing greenhouse gases.”

In other words, the human-made shift has been helpful. By increasing yields, farmers have unintentionally created weather patterns that seem to be protecting their crops and helping them grow more corn. (Of course, burning fossil fuels to plant, cultivate, harvest, process, and ship farm products has been shown to be a major contributor to rising levels of greenhouse gases.)

Though similar effects have to some degree been observed in the rice-growing regions of eastern China, the report marks the first time the effects of agriculture on regional climate change in the central U.S. have undergone comprehensive analysis. The findings document the most significant human-made regional climate shift in world history.

“On a global level, this research is important because it proves the influence of agricultural intensification is really an independent problem from greenhouse gas emissions,” explains Alter.

By comparing observed historical trends in the Corn Belt’s climate to those predicted by a variety of global simulations used by the World Climate Research Program, which coordinates climate research sponsored by various international organizations, the report showed the models were inaccurate for the region (they predicted summer temperatures would rise and rainfall would increase by just four percent). Though the WCRP models accounted for greenhouse gas emissions and other human and natural factors, they did not consider agricultural intensification.

“Our findings are a bit different from what people thought about the mechanisms of climate change,” says Alter. He believes that accurately simulating and understanding climate change at the local level will require a look at cases of agricultural intensification like Nebraska’s corn boom.

But how, specifically, has growing more corn changed the climate? Associate Nebraska State Climatologist Al Dutcher says it’s complicated.

On one hand, it has to do with what Hunnicutt and other farmers refer to as “corn sweat.” This happens when photosynthesis boosts the amount of water vapor in the air.

“When a plant’s pores, called stomata, open to allow carbon dioxide to enter, they simultaneously allow water to escape,” writes Kimberly Hickok, who covers climate change for Science Magazine and reviewed the report. Known as transpiration, the process cools the plant and surrounding air, and increases the amount of water going into the atmosphere and returning as rainfall. As Hickok notes, “the cycle may continue” as that additional rainwater evaporates back into the atmosphere and causes rainfall on other farms and towns downwind.

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Put another way: More corn means more transpiration. Which, in turn, produces slightly cooler temperatures and increased precipitation. The fact that corn is a non-native species boosts the effect.

“The predominant native vegetation in central and eastern Nebraska is grass,” explains Dutcher. Farmers have replaced the area’s vast seas of grass with more than 9 million acres of corn, which transpires at a rate 20 percent higher than indigenous grasses. “Agriculture is literally funneling moisture into the atmosphere, and all that humidity has created a kind of protective bubble against rising temperatures.”

Dutcher and Hunnicutt say growing more corn — and thus, creating more transpiration — would have been impossible without advances in farming efficiency. The introduction of high-yielding varieties, better irrigation, and soil management techniques, along with the ability to use computer sensors to closely monitor field conditions, have all contributed to soaring yields.

“One of the biggest factors is the widespread use of cover crops, crop residue management, and no-till farming methods,” writes University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources extension engineer Paul Jasa. Together, the practices have erased the need for conventional tillage, dramatically increased organic matter in the soil, reduced evaporation and runoff, and lowered summer surface temperatures. “With time, the [native clay-based] soil has become much healthier and better at retaining water,” Jasa continues. “This has made crops more resilient to traumatic weather events and, in general, much more productive.”

Hunnicutt says automated irrigation has helped boost overall production and allowed him to grow corn in pivot corners where his grandfather could not. Upward of 340 acres that formerly yielded nothing now contribute as much as 180 bushels per acre. In his tenure as a farmer, full-field yields have grown by more than 50 bushels an acre.

“I can get minute-to-minute weather predictions and tell you moisture levels anywhere in our fields just by glancing at my phone,” says Hunnicutt. “In the 1950s, my grandad was using a Farmers’ Almanac. Back then, if they thought the soil was too dry, they just dumped water on it. Now, I know exactly what my plants need and when to apply it.”

As might be expected, Alter’s report has a dark side. And that dark side has global implications.

“In terms of the Corn Belt, the degree of agricultural intensification we’ve seen in the last 30 years isn’t sustainable,” he says. “It’s projected to soon come to an end and may even decline.” And if that happens, the mitigating effect of agriculture will disappear, and global temperatures will rise even faster.

Though studies have yet to be conducted around the world, Alter says that areas that have experienced substantial agricultural intensification have likely experienced similar benefits: more rainfall and cooler average temperatures during the summers. Like Nebraska, the effects have probably masked negative changes and will eventually be overwhelmed.

“I know some of the anti-climate change folks will probably poo-poo this, but it’s something my family takes very seriously,” says Hunnicutt. “We’ve been in this business for five generations, and I hope to see my children and grandchildren carry on that tradition. We’re doing everything we can to reduce fuel consumption and increase efficiency. Our hope is these [mitigatory effects] will give us enough of a window to make adjustments and prepare for what’s coming.”

In the meantime, he hopes the world gets its act together and curbs emissions before it’s too late.

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Americans have planted so much corn that it’s changing the weather

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

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How do we feed the world’s growing population without wrecking the earth? It’s a question that looks especially urgent given estimates that some 9.8 billion people will inhabit the planet by 2050, up from 7.6 billion now. Without improving techniques and technology, feeding all of them would require putting an area twice the size of India under plow and pasture while emitting as much carbon as 13,000 coal plants running nonstop for a year, according to a report published on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute.

The Washington D.C.-based think tank has been working on this report for the last six years, looking for a solution to our existential triple challenge: feed everyone and shrink agricultural emissions to keep the world from heating more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, all without clearing more land for farming. The WRI’s report lays out a way that everyone could get enough to eat in 2050, even as we turn farmland into forest and allow carbon-sucking trees to spread their leaves over an area larger than Australia.

The report recommends an all-of-the-above approach starting with reducing the size of harvests needed. By eating less meat, leveling off population growth, reducing waste, and phasing out biofuels, we could reduce the amount of additional food needed by half:

World Resources Institute

But diminishing demand for meat by getting more people to go vegan just isn’t enough.

“There’s a tendency in this field for people to treat dietary change as a magic asterisk where somehow we wave our hands and there will be an overwhelming reduction in meat eating,” said Tim Searchinger the Princeton professor who led the research on this report. “We wanted to focus on things that were realistic and achievable.”

If we also develop better seeds and animal breeds and use existing farm and pasture-land more intensively, we could shrink our agricultural footprint by 800 million hectares, an area bigger than Texas.

That’s important, because the world needs to cover at least one Texas with trees to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees of warming. And, as the chart below shows, we’d have to do all of the above and more if we want to make agriculture do its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Pulling all this off seems daunting, but the researchers divided the action needed into a 22-item “menu” with discrete recommendations like eating less beef and lamb, and breeding crops that can withstand higher temperatures.

“Not everything on the menu is going to be for everyone,” said Richard Waite, a WRI researcher who worked on the study. “But there’s something for everyone whether you are just shopping for your family, or in charge of food procurement for a major company,”

The report also points out that very little of the $600 billion a year governments spend on agriculture goes toward the innovations that would give us a sustainable food system. Agricultural research and development gets just $50 billion a year — that’s including private funding and public support.

World Resources Institute

Most of the money for agriculture comes in the form of subsidies and price-supports that shelter farmers from changes in the industry. The report says if those funds were diverted to programs that reduce food waste, squeeze more food from the ground, and study how to improve soil health, the world could solve this three-headed monster of a problem.

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

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