Environment

If the food industry is not in crisis, it certainly contains an increasing level of complexity and associated risks. A recent analysis suggested 50% of US food production is wasted, with global estimates above 30%. Retailers want perfect produce, leading to wastage occurring throughout the food supply chain. They also seek low prices, leading to industrialization of processes. Food scares such as mad cow disease (BSE) and cross contamination mean many consumers have less trust in their food, increasingly seeking information on authenticity and production practices. Over 80% of antibiotics…

Giant Ice Age species including elephant-sized sloths and powerful saber-toothed cats that once roamed the windswept plains of Patagonia, southern South America, were finally felled by a perfect storm of a rapidly warming climate and humans, according to a paper in Science Advances. The timing and cause of rapid extinctions of the megafauna has remained a mystery for centuries. The work led by the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, says that it was only when the climate warmed, long after humans first arrived in Patagonia, did the megafauna suddenly die…

The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers. But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment. Welfare problems Despite the idyllic image of outdoor farming, several industry practices negatively affect dairy cows. To meet production demands, dairy cows are subject to a continuous cycle of impregnation, induced calving and milking. Tail-docking…

A new study has implicated farms as a bigger source of fine-particulate air pollution than all other sources. This is no surprise in Europe, China, Russia and Europe, since food is the most important strategic resource everywhere.  And it's an easy enough problem to solve. As technology continues to improve, emissions will go down anyway, so fumes from nitrogen-rich fertilizers and animal waste that combine in the air with industrial emissions to form solid particles could double and particulate matter would still go down.  Agricultural air pollution comes mainly in the form of…

I had drinks with an old college friend last week. As we reminisced and I caught him up on my job leading the Tropical Ecology Assessment&Monitoring (TEAM) Network, he stopped me mid-sentence.   “Don’t get me wrong — I love animals, and camera trapping is cool,” he said. “But why spend so much time and energy keeping track of species halfway around the world? Why does it matter if tapirs in Ecuador or chimps in Uganda are declining? Why should I care?”   This wasn’t the first time I’d been asked these kinds of questions while working with TEAM, which uses camera-trap data to…

(This article originally appeared on Forbes 4/29/16)  April has been declared “National Pest Control Month,” so this is a good time to talk about one of those annoying realities of life – pests! Pests are something you will deal with whether you are a farmer, an organic farmer, a gardener, a home-owner, an apartment dweller, a hotelier, a restaurant owner or just about any other role. Sometimes they just a nuisance.  Sometimes there are real health issues. As I’ve written before, pests are simply part of the natural order, and they even plague plants growing in…

An international team has just published a study titled "Greening of the Earth and its Drivers" in the journal Nature Climate Change (doi:10.1038/nclimate3004) showing significant greening of a quarter to one-half of the Earth's vegetated lands using data from the NASA-MODIS and NOAA-AVHRR satellite sensors of the past 33 years. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees. Green leaves produce sugars using energy in the sunlight to mix carbon dioxide (CO2) drawn in from the air with water and nutrients pumped in from the ground. These sugars are the source of food,…

Natural solutions are all the rage to people who believe in a 20th century "balance of nature" hypothesis. Scientists know better, it is obvious that there is no ecological balance, no environmental harmony, and never has been, the winners are in nature are instead species who got somewhere first or were better suited to an area and outlasted others and so seemed to be a balanced fit. Flawed balance of nature thinking is why so many environmental ecologists once believed introducing a new species to an area would bring balance to an old one - which has rarely happened - and modern ones have…

A new test has been developed to check for contamination of shallow groundwater from modern gas extraction techniques, such as hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. That can be good or bad. In 2016, we can detect almost anything, which has been a boon for environmental lawyers but does a real disservice to the public, who are confused about the detection of a hazardous chemical versus their actual risk. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), for example, has declared red meat as hazardous as plutonium and cigarette smoking, but of course the actual risk to…

A recent survey revealed that people who claimed to eat more fast food also had possible exposure of higher levels of phthalates. Is that bad? In 2016, when all chemicals are scary, it certainly is, and environmental groups have raised a fortune claiming such chemicals "leach" out of containers and into food. The television show "60 Minutes", which has long promoted health scares, did a story on them and ever since groups like Natural Resources Defense Council (which manufactured one prominent scare, alar on apples, with the left-wing public relations company Fenton Communications) have…