California Using Recycled Fracking Water To Irrigate Crops

Tests found that small amounts of potentially harmful or carcinogenic chemicals remain in the recycled fracking water used to irrigate crops in California’s fertile Central Valley.

MintPress News Desk
By MintPress News Desk
California Gov. Jerry Brown talks with reporters after a meeting about the drought

REDDING, California --- California’s governor, a recipient of generous donations from the oil and gas industry, is now responsible for putting dangerous “frack water” into the American food supply. As California struggles with a historic drought, some farmers in California’s agriculturally fertile Central Valley turned to a water recycling

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Feeding a Warmer, Riskier World

The livelihoods of 2.5 billion family farmers depend on agriculture, and the sector accounts for as much 30 percent of national GDP in countries like Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Mozambique, among others.

Jose Graziano Da Silva
By Jose Graziano Da Silva
Sheep stand next to a field covered in water at the small town of Boquineni, northern Spain.

Sheep stand next to a field covered in water at the small town of Boquineni, northern Spain. ROME - Artificial meat. Indoor aquaculture. Vertical farms. Irrigation drones. Once the realm of science fiction, these things are now fact. Food production is going high tech – at least, in some places. But the vast majority of the world’s

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Integrated Farming: The Only Way To Survive a Rising Sea

“An integrated farming system virtually replicates nature.” — Debabrata Guchhait, a trainer with the Indraprastha Srijan Welfare Society (ISWS) in the Sundarbans

Manipadma Jena
By Manipadma Jena
farming

The Mandal family lives on a half-hectare farm in the Sundarbans and uses integrated methods to ensure survival. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS SUNDARBANS, India  - When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks

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With New Standards, Global Beef Industry Takes Contentious Step Toward Sustainability

Do new standards represent a genuine move towards boosting the sustainability of one of the world’s greatest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, or do they miss the mark by steering clear of specific standards and binding enforcement mechanisms?

Carey L. Biron
By Carey L. Biron
Food Prices Beef

WASHINGTON --- Last month, for the first time, a significant cross-section of the global beef industry agreed to a set of broad principles aimed at nudging the sector toward greater sustainability. Yet some prominent watchdog groups say the new criteria are overly broad, and worry they will allow products to be marketed as “sustainable” without

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EPA Finally Updating Pesticide-Use Guidelines For Farm Workers

Advocates say a draft of the updated Worker Protection Standard is imperfect, but still offers greater protections to laborers in one of the country’s most hazardous industries.

Carey L. Biron
By Carey L. Biron
pesticide

WASHINGTON --- U.S. regulators are moving into the final stages of a major update to guidelines on the use of pesticides by agricultural workers, changes that labor advocates have been urging for more than a decade. Indeed, it’s been almost a quarter-century since the Environmental Protection Agency updated the guidelines, known as the Worker

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Global Warming, Big Ag, US Military Standing In Way Of Native Food Sovereignty

Native people from coast to coast are struggling to maintain their ties to foods that have sustained them for generations. Global warming, Big Ag and even the U.S. military are all standing in the way of food sovereignty.

Christine Graef
By Christine Graef
Food And Farm-Wild Rice

OTTAWA, Ontario --- Annie Alowa was a Yup’ik woman, born in 1924 on St. Lawrence Island, west of mainland Alaska, surrounded by the Bering Sea. Just 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle, it is miles away from any industry or agriculture, but the Yup’ik people have thrived here for generations, sustained by greens, berries, fish and marine

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