Farming – Climate360 News

Pesticides Bring Problems Like the “Dirty Dozen”

16Aug

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Pesticides Bring Problems Like the “Dirty Dozen”

By Willow Campbell https://youtu.be/TGe3sRyGLHo Many synthetic pesticides used in farming can harm both the climate and your body. Some foods retain the residue of pesticides more than others, to the point where no existing product can wash them away. In May of this year, a study from Frontiers in Environmental Science showed that pesticides widely used in American agriculture pose a threat to organisms that are necessary for healthy soil, biodiversity and soil carbon sequestration. The idea of regenerative agriculture and using soil as a carbon sponge to help combat climate change is gaining momentum around the world, according to Friends of the Earth, an environmentally focused campaign organization that helped ...

By embracing sustainability, Louisiana farmers make their farms more efficient

Agricultural producers learn about conservation practices like cover crop management in the Louisiana Master Farmer certification program. Photo courtesy of Louisiana Master Farmer program By Sydney McGovern BATON ROUGE, LA – Mead Hardwick is a fourth-generation farmer. His family still lives and works off the same 20,000-acre plot of land that his great-grandfather purchased. He doesn’t fit the conventional image of a salt-of-the-earth agricultural farmer surrounded by dust and dressed in overalls. Hardwick moved to Dallas, earned a bachelor’s degree and worked in real estate finance for 11 years before finding his way back to the farm in Northeast Louisiana. “I grew up on the farm. I mean I literally, physically grew up here, and so that's always kind of with you,” Hardwick s...

Ohio Farmers’ Key to Combat Climate Change? Transition to Organic

By Willow Campbell Sasha Miller, of Purplebrown Farmstead, checks on a young apple tree. June 13th, 2021 in Boston Heights, Ohio. Photo: Willow Campbell, Climate 360 Recent weather changes are threatening Ohio’s farmers, but a switch to organic practices could be part of the solution. All that’s needed now, is for the government to support the transition. According to the Ohio Livestock Coalition, “Agriculture is the number-one contributor to Ohio's economy,” with almost 75,000 farms in the state, and one out of eight jobs in Ohio related to farming. Most of the state has warmed by about one degree (F) in the last century due to the larger effects of global warming, as reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2016. This change in cli...