The $105 billion organic food industry is not terribly worried about yields. Their customers are primarily wealthy and concerned more about the perception of benefit than they are cost. But to…

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) found in flame retardant cloth, paint, adhesives and electrical transformers, have been banned since 1979, but if you live on top of a waste disposal site or you…

Honeybees pollinate a third of Australia's food crops. Losing them due to varroa might would cost the economy billions of dollars. David McClenaghan, Author provided By Gary Fitt, CSIRO A nationwide…

Take a spot that only gets 6 to 8 inches of rain per year, with erosion causing such blinding dust that there is zero visibility, and build a wheat farm. Wait, why would you do that? Washington State…

Last week, in Part I of this two part series, "Bee Deaths Mystery Solved? Neonicotinoids (Neonics) May Actually Help Bee Health”, we explored the claims by Harvard School of Public Health researcher…

Vegetable juice ice-melt?  Ice-free pavement? "Smart snowplows"?   Cold-climate researchers at Washington State University are clearing the road with 'green' alternatives to salt. Do they…

Reports that honey bees are dying in unusually high numbers has concerned many scientists, farmers and beekeepers, and  gripped the public. There have been thousands of stories ricocheting…

In the 1960s, there was talk of a dystopian future where the masses starved because the ghost of Malthus came home to roost and the world could no longer feed its people. Instead, Norm Borlaug and…

Scientists have found that seed dormancy, a property that prevents germination when conditions are not right, was present in the first seeds 360 million years ago. Seed dormancy is a phenomenon that…

Scientists have found that transplanting a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees boosts the ability of willow and lawn grass to withstand the effects of the industrial pollutant…