Tag Archives: Agriculture

Amenic181/Shutterstock Mark Maslin, UCL and Carmen Nab, UCL For many of us, coffee is essential. It allows us to function in the morning and gives a much needed boost during the day. But in new research, we revealed the effect that our favourite caffeine hit has on the planet. Weight for weight, coffee produced by the least sustainable means generates …

Madagascar is a hotspot for biodiversity – and deforestation. Dudarev Mikhail / shutterstock David Williams, University of Leeds and Michael Clark, University of Oxford Scientists know that biodiversity is declining across much of the world although less universally and dramatically than we feared. We also know that things are likely to get worse in the future, with a combination of …

The ‘three sisters’ are staple foods for many Native American tribes. Marilyn Angel Wynn/Getty Images Christina Gish Hill, Iowa State University Historians know that turkey and corn were part of the first Thanksgiving, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. And traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans …

Around 25,000 Ethiopians fleeing conflict in the Tigray region have crossed into neighbouring Sudan. Photo by EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP via Getty Images Seppe Deckers, KU Leuven; Jan Nyssen, Ghent University, and Sil Lanckriet, Ghent University A new military conflict is sadly unfolding in the Horn of Africa. On November 4th, 2020, a military conflict erupted between the forces of the federal …

Fires on Kilimanjaro, October 2020. Thomas Becker/picture alliance via Getty Images Andreas Hemp, Bayreuth University In October, firefighters in Tanzania had to tackle a number of fires on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain and the largest free-standing mountain in the world. The mountain and surrounding forests fall into Kilimanjaro National Park, named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. Andreas …

Pajtica/Shutterstock John Lynch, University of Oxford How people grow food and the way we use the land is an important, though often overlooked, contributor to climate change. While most people recognise the role of burning fossil fuels in heating the atmosphere, there has been less discussion about the necessary changes for bringing agriculture in line with a “net-zero” world. But …

Herders at the N’gonga cattle market, Niger: Changing rainfall patterns alter locations of pastures the migrating herders depend on. Getty Images Roman Hoffmann, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research The link between climate change and migration has gained both academic and public interest in recent years. Many studies have found that environmental hazards affect migration. But the links are nuanced …

Zlikovec/Shutterstock Prithvi Simha, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Björn Vinnerås, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Jenna Senecal, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences It’s likely that most of the food you’ll eat today was not farmed sustainably. The global system of food production is the largest human influence on the planet’s natural cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus. How much crops …

Le maïs est la céréale la plus cultivée dans le monde avant le riz et le blé. Christophe Maertens / Unsplash, CC BY-NC-SA Murilo Veloso, UniLaSalle Cet article est publié dans le cadre de la Fête de la science 2020 (du 2 au 12 octobre 2020 en métropole et du 6 au 16 novembre en Corse, en outre-mer et à l’international) dont …

kung_tom/shutterstock David Rose, University of Reading and Charlotte-Anne Chivers, University of Gloucestershire Depending on who you listen to, artificial intelligence may either free us from monotonous labour and unleash huge productivity gains, or create a dystopia of mass unemployment and automated oppression. In the case of farming, some researchers, business people and politicians think the effects of AI and other …