Chefs and home cooks in the eastern U.S. could soon have easier access to a homegrown “super food,” thanks to a Cornell-led team of researchers working to expand broccoli's availability at farms, farmer's markets and grocery stores from Maine to Florida.
Climate change poses a major challenge to humanity’s ability to feed its growing population. But a new study of sorghum, led by Stephen Kresovich and Geoff Morris of the University of South Carolina, promises to make this crop an invaluable asset in facing that challenge.
In the rain forests of the Congo, where mammals and birds are hunted to near-extinction, an impenetrable sound of buzzing insects blankets the atmosphere.
The future landscape of the American Midwest could look a lot like the past—covered in native grasslands rather than agricultural crops. This is not a return to the past, however, but a future that could depend on grasslands for biofuels, grazing systems, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services. A major threat to this ecosystem is an old one—weeds and their influence on the soil.
A comprehensive map three years in the making is telling the story of humans’ impact on the Great Lakes, identifying how “environmental stressors” stretching from Minnesota to Ontario are shaping the future of an ecosystem that contains 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.
The American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America commend PCAST on a report that identifies threats to America’s agricultural preparedness and proposes recommendations for strengthening it.
Giant ragweed lives up to its name, towering over crops and choking out surrounding plant species. Just one ragweed plant per square meter has been shown to reduce crop yields 45 to 77 percent. Now giant ragweed has evolved resistance to the herbicide glyphosate, which had been effective at controlling the weed.
Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture scientist, Dr. Raj Lada, driven by a commitment to rural sustainability, is providing support and research to innovate the Christmas tree industry in Eastern Canada. Lada has established the first, national (international) Christmas tree Research Centre (CRC) in Truro/Bible Hill.
Justine Vanden Heuvel is a an assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University and a former cranberry specialist at the UMass Cranberry Station in East Wareham, Mass. She comments on the challenges and triumphs of the 2012 cranberry season.
No Thanksgiving dinner is complete without a succulent roasted turkey. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that consumers cook and eat more than 45 million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Very few Americans, however, know much about the difference between their gravy-smothered poultry and the poultry that earlier generations of Americans ate to celebrate the holiday.
“Ancient turkeys weren’t your Butterball,” said Rob Fleischer, head of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics. “We set out to compare the genetic diversity of the domestic turkeys we eat today with that of the ancestral wild turkey from South Mexico. Some of what we found surprised us.”
An international scientific collaboration that includes two Kansas State University researchers is bringing home the bacon when it comes to potential animal and human health advancements, thanks to successfully mapping the genome of the domestic pig.
The popularity of organic foods and products continues to climb, creating greater demand for organic agriculture. Effective natural alternatives to synthetic chemical weed and pest management are needed to meet organic standards. Essential oils, such as clove oil, offer an avenue to explore.
Soil scientists and archeologists have uncovered evidence that the Maya grew corn sustainably in the lowlands of Tikal, Guatemala, but that they may also have farmed erosion-prone slopes over time.
The 1930s Dust Bowl was a singular event in U.S. history, but Dust Bowl-like droughts and conditions do still occur. Experts are available to discuss what events like the 2012 U.S. drought mean for us now and how we can prepare for similar events in the future.
What is the best course of action when an invading noxious weed threatens to attack crop yields and assault grazing land? Invite a friend to dinner. In this case, the friend is a plant-eating insect—the stem-mining weevil.
Not only are feedlots paying record prices for feed and essentially record prices for feeder cattle, it has been recognized for quite a while now that the supply of feeder cattle will be increasingly inadequate to maintain feedlot inventories at any price.
Instead of an early snowfall this time of year, farmers along the eastern seaboard are dealing with flood waters and wind damage from Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to affect everything from poultry production to grocery prices.
A Kansas State University professor's research analyzing lipids is helping scientists around the world understand plant responses and develop better crops that can withstand environmental stress.
On October 23 at 1pm, top USDA and academic researchers will address agriculture and climate in a special session of the Soil Science Society of America’s annual meeting. And they’ll take on a third, largely new aspect of climate change and agriculture: how nitrogen pollution compounds climate change, and vice versa. The work draws from a new special report to the United States’ National Climate Assessment published in the journal Biogeochemistry.
Scientists have identified three neighboring genes that make soybeans resistant to the most damaging disease of soybean. The genes exist side-by-side on a stretch of chromosome, but only give resistance when that stretch is duplicated several times in the plant.
Weed scientists in Oregon have found that the timing of herbicide application along with reseeding of native grasses offers the best recipe for restoring native grasslands while controlling invasive weeds. Grasslands are a valuable resource for ecosystems, providing soil conservation, food and fiber production, and wildlife habitat. When threatened by invading exotic species, the quality and quantity of forage for wildlife can be reduced, fire frequencies can be altered, soil moisture and nutrients can be depleted, and the costs of land management can increase.
Cornell University, New York’s Land Grant university, has several teams of researchers and extension specialists working to support the state’s growing wine industry. These experts say it was a challenging year for the region’s vineyards and bottlers, but that 2012 should prove to be a very good year.
Drought conditions have had a significant effect on feeder cattle supplies, with feedlots expected to feel a noticeable pinch in the months ahead as they will be unable to maintain current inventories.
Researchers at Arizona State University are examining the ethical aspects of food production and consumption. They are helping consumers navigate the maze of moral choices involved in filling their plates and bellies. And they are finding that being morally mindful can lead to better nutrition, as well.
It’s a battleground down there — in the soil where plants and bacteria dwell. Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there’s a "dark side" to the relationship between the plant and its white knight, according to University of Delaware research reported in Plant Physiology.
Kochia, a weed that is rapidly becoming more abundant across southern Canadian prairies and the Great Plains of the United States, can reduce crop yields by up to 60 percent. Fighting this weed has become difficult because more than 90 percent of kochia populations are now resistant to acetolactate synthase (ALS)-inhibiting herbicides. The phenomenon of negative cross-resistance, however, may offer another path to defeating the spread of this weed.
The “siloed” structure of U.S. health agencies is hindering efforts to spot and combat animal-to-human afflictions, such as West Nile Virus, New York University sociologist Colin Jerolmack has concluded after conducting an organizational analysis of their operations.
Conservationists, government agencies, and landowners often have different ideas about the best uses for land and natural resources. When these stakeholders build partnerships that achieve common goals and meet their individual needs, it is something to celebrate. To increase awareness of successful partnerships in land management and to encourage future collaborations, the Bureau of Land Management, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and the Society for Rangeland Management organized a special conference session and journal.
Top wheat experts are reporting a breakthrough in their ability to track strains of a deadly, rapidly mutating wheat pathogen called stem rust that threatens wheat fields from East Africa to South Asia.
Georgia Tech Professional Education will be conducting a course at Georgia Tech-Savannah on September 20, 2012 that will provide the tools to prevent violations, and create a safer facility for any employee or employer that receives, handles, stores, processes, or ships bulk raw agricultural commodities.
Already ranked by some as number one in nutrition among vegetables, the traditional sweet potato can be nutritionally supercharged with a simple, inexpensive electric current treatment that increases its content of healthful polyphenols or antioxidants by 60 percent, scientists said here today. Their report on the first electrical enhancement of sweet potatoes, a dietary staple since prehistoric times, was part of the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Oklahoma State University research indicates that excessively hot summertime temperatures can shorten the gestation length of beef cows, altering animal management requirements.
Even as crops resistant to 2,4-D herbicide are being developed, populations of weeds are also developing a resistance. A 2,4-D–resistant variety of the waterhemp weed has been found, and its spread could lessen the impact of an herbicide widely used in grassland and crop production. Despite worldwide use of 2,4-D since the 1940s, only 17 weeds were previously known to be resistant to it.
Chris Henke specializes in courses on science and technology, work, the environment, and research methods. In addition to my work in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, he is also a member of Colgate's Environmental Studies Program.
The Alliance to Feed the Future today announced the availability of new, free curricula to help students in grades K-8 learn about modern food and agricultural production and how American farmers and producers provide safe, nutritious and abundant food choices every day.
The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years, but those conditions will become the “new normal” for most of the coming century. Such climatic extremes have increased as a result of global warming.
New Zealand is a very weedy country. Indigenous plant species are matched in number by naturalized, exotic species, and about 20 new invaders are discovered each year. Thus, a weed eradication program has been under way for the past 10 years, but completely eradicating an unwanted plant species is much more difficult than it might seem.
Data released this week paints a grim picture for farmers throughout the United States. Almost everywhere, fruit, crop, livestock and dairy farmers are being choked by the driest growing season since 1956. Researchers in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University are available to talk with the media about the impacts of the Drought of 2012.
Scientists searching for clues to understand how superweeds obtain resistance to the popular herbicide glyphosate may have been missing a critical piece of information, a Purdue University study shows.
Food, agriculture, and environmental research part of sequestration spending slash planned as part of an upcoming vote on the defense appropriations bill.
University of Washington researchers found that the decline in milk production due to climate change will vary across the U.S., since there are significant differences in humidity and how much the temperature swings between night and day across the country.
Like many Neotropical fauna, sloths are running out of room to maneuver. As forests in South and Central America are cleared for agriculture and other human uses, populations of these arboreal leaf eaters, which depend on large trees for both food and refuge, can become isolated and at risk. But one type of sustainable agriculture, shade grown cacao plantations, a source of chocolate, could become critical refuges and bridges between intact forests for the iconic animals.
The Departments of Homeland Security and Agriculture have developed a novel vaccine for one of the seven strains of the dreaded Foot-and-Mouth Disease, paving the way for the development of the others.
For more than a decade, consumer demand for organic products in the United States has seen double-digit growth. Organic foods now comprise more than 3 percent of U.S. food sales, and the amount of certified organic farmland is increasing as well. Yet demand still supports importation of organic products. A major limitation affecting domestic organic crop production is effective weed control.