As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
Meet the rural farmers in southeastern Spain fighting the encroaching Sahara Desert through regenerative agriculture and landscape restoration.
BEN GUERIR, Morocco — Moussa Bouray sifts through hundreds of soil samples on the shelves of his lab that that will undergo analysis for nutrients: nitrogen, potassium, and especially phosphorus.…
BATANGHARI, Indonesia — In a sweltering oil palm field in Batanghari village, Rokani fixes a sickle to an 11-meter (36-foot) pole and begins cutting down bunches of fruit from the…
A new study recommends returning oil palm biomass to planting areas to maintain soil health — specifically, by replenishing the soil with silicon. The research was published in April by…
Last year, farmer protests erupted throughout the Netherlands, riding a wave of rural anger at government plans to drastically halve nitrogen emissions by downsizing and closing farms. This quickly swept…
In an effort to feed 170 million people in a rapidly growing economy, Bangladeshi farmers rely on the widespread use of chemical fertilizers to boost production, leaving the country’s soil…
PARAÍBA VALLEY, Brazil — Under the frigid morning air of the Mantiqueira Mountains in southeastern Brazil, honeybees begin leaving the hive. “When day breaks they are calmer,” says Mara Galvão,…
Food safety in Bangladesh faces a serious threat from heavy metal contamination, according to recent studies, with one of the country’s most widely consumed vegetables, the eggplant, containing potentially cancer-causing…
Likely the world’s most popular garment, jeans use huge amounts of water to grow irrigated cotton, a major factor in destroying the Aral Sea. Today, the industry, though making sustainability pledges, still does much harm.
Brazilian soybean producers have been highly successful in using genome technology to benefit their crops, with huge economic and environmental gains, a new paper highlights. Currently, the growers are using…
Since the downfall of Sri Lanka’s former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in mid-July, some commentators have blamed the economic crisis and social unrest that precipitated his departure on his nominal experiment…
KATHMANDU — Thousands of farmers in Nepal's fertile southern plains, the country’s rice bowl, face a double whammy of a fertilizer shortage and inadequate monsoon rains. This is likely to…
As if all the strategic and political aspects of the Putin-Bolsonaro alliance weren’t detrimental enough, underlying environmental considerations add yet another undesirable dimension. Meeting with Putin at the Kremlin literally…
BLANTYRE, Malawi — A harvest of just four sacks of maize, each weighing 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, means only four and a half months of food security for Ellena…
Packed into a thatched-roof meeting hall in the village of Urucurituba, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, hundreds of Mura Indigenous people mulled over whether to allow a massive potash mine…
KARUNGARU, Kenya — Karungaru village in eastern Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi county is dry — so dry that even the resilient acacia trees have shed their leaves to cope. But amid…
Industrial agriculture feeds billions of people and created the modern world. But the nitrogen and phosphorus it’s fertilized with is putting the biosphere, and humanity, at risk.
"Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are," the French lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in his 1826 opus, Physiologie du Goût. This is quite…
Dark, milk, or somewhere in between, chocolate is a favorite treat all over the world. The Theobroma tree, the genus responsible for our cravings, thrives in shady, tropical regions. But…
BENGUET, Philippines — Every day, at least 1,500 metric tons of semi-temperate vegetables are trucked down from Benguet, a mountainous province in the northern Philippines, to depots called bagsakan in…
TELA, Honduras — On Feb. 6, 1995, an unidentified white pickup truck rolled up to the home of environmental activist Jeanette Kawas. It was a quiet Monday evening in the…
Land-based options offer the best solutions to help nations meet their Paris carbon reduction goals and limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, says study in response to new IPCC climate report.
Scientists have long believed the lack of nutrients in tropical forests soils meant that they weren’t very productive when it came to plant growth. But at the same time, trees…
DAVAO CITY, Philippines – If the street Pedro Arnado was looking down was on the Philippine government’s roadmap for future palm oil development, critics say it would be one highly…
Indonesian government investigators have uncovered widespread profiteering by state-backed retailers, who are selling millions of dollars worth of subsidized fertilizers meant for small farmers to big plantations. Nearly a third of…
Forest and soybean fields in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photos by Rhett Butler. Soy consumption in China and Europe is having significant ecological impacts in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso,…
Excess nutrients impacting productivity, biodiversity, functioning of grasslands around the world The world’s grasslands are being destabilized by fertilization, according to a paper recently published in the journal Nature. In…
Heavy air pollution, smog and deposition of N in the city centre of Urumqi, China. Credit: Mr. Liu Xuejun Nitrogen deposited on land and water in China increased 60 percent…
Over 25 years after people stopped growing cardamom in Sri Lanka's Knuckles Forest Reserve (KFR), the spice crop is still having an impact on the forest, according to a recent…
