Farmers fight for student loan forgiveness as federal program falters
Last week, participants in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program got a nasty shock: The Education Department said their approval letters, which come from third-party administrator FedLoan...
View ArticleWe still don’t really know if organic farming is better
You might have noticed a rash of random-looking headlines about organic food a few weeks back—”Organic growth good for small farm survival,” “Organic Food Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” “Eating...
View ArticleWhy Georgia farmers decided to shell their own peanuts
“With global populations rising, maximizing yields while minimizing impacts becomes a critical science,” intones the narrator, over swelling strings and steadily driving percussion. It’s the type of...
View ArticleCan cover crops clean up the Corn Belt?
To understand Iowa’s water problem, just follow the Raccoon River as it connects the country to the city, flowing south and east towards Des Moines. For more than a hundred years, Iowa’s state capital...
View ArticleHelp wanted in the vineyards
The next time you raise a glass of Napa County cabernet or Finger Lakes Riesling, toast the vineyard workers who made it possible. They are a scarce resource, and President Trump’s immigration policies...
View ArticleWhy do so many farmers have diabetes?
Last month, analytics firm Gallup, and personalized healthcare website Sharecare, released a new report on the state of American wellbeing. The research, titled, “The Face of Diabetes in the United...
View ArticleNew Jersey lawmakers want a $15 minimum wage, but not for farmworkers
A New Jersey lawmaker wants to raise the minimum wage for farmworkers in his state to $12.50 an hour—which would make it one of the highest such rates in the country. You might think that sounds like a...
View ArticleFDA regulates gene-edited animals like drugs, not food. That’s a mistake.
In 2017, the United States Food and Drug Administration proposed to regulate a specific subset of these variations as drugs: in particular, those introduced into animal genomes using modern molecular...
View ArticleFrom potatoes to coffee, plant breeders are changing crops to adapt to an...
We tend to view the effects of climate change through the lens of the worst and most dramatic disasters, from hurricanes and floods to forest fires. But farmers have a more mundane fear: that as...
View ArticleHow an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more...
This month, CNBC published its Top 50 Disruptors List, a guide to the new generation of not-yet-public companies vying to change the way the world does business. Among them are some of the world’s most...
View ArticleFlorida sugar companies hit with lawsuit to halt the controversial practice...
The burning starts in October, when sugarcane companies begin to set fire to nearly 400,000 acres on the shores of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee, clearing away the leaves to prepare the plants for harvest....
View ArticleWe mapped how food gets from farms to your home
My team at the University of Illinois just developed the first high-resolution map of the U.S. food supply chain. Our map is a comprehensive snapshot of all food flows between counties in the...
View ArticleMidwest farmers have taken a beating from the U.S.-China trade wars. Why are...
America’s farmers have borne the brunt of China’s retaliation in the trade war that President Donald Trump launched in 2018. One reason: China is the biggest buyer of many U.S. agricultural products,...
View ArticlePublic science for private interests: How University of Missouri agricultural...
In 2006, Zhanyuan Zhang, a University of Missouri professor of plant sciences, was approached by Dow AgroSciences. The industry giant came bearing pieces of DNA and a problem for Zhang to solve....
View ArticleCan cover crops clean up the Corn Belt?
To understand Iowa’s water problem, just follow the Raccoon River as it connects the country to the city, flowing south and east towards Des Moines. For more than a hundred years, Iowa’s state capital...
View ArticleHelp wanted in the vineyards
The next time you raise a glass of Napa County cabernet or Finger Lakes Riesling, toast the vineyard workers who made it possible. They are a scarce resource, and President Trump’s immigration policies...
View ArticleWhy do so many farmers have diabetes?
Last month, analytics firm Gallup, and personalized healthcare website Sharecare, released a new report on the state of American wellbeing. The research, titled, “The Face of Diabetes in the United...
View ArticleNew Jersey lawmakers want a $15 minimum wage, but not for farmworkers
A New Jersey lawmaker wants to raise the minimum wage for farmworkers in his state to $12.50 an hour—which would make it one of the highest such rates in the country. You might think that sounds like a...
View ArticleFDA regulates gene-edited animals like drugs, not food. That’s a mistake.
In 2017, the United States Food and Drug Administration proposed to regulate a specific subset of these variations as drugs: in particular, those introduced into animal genomes using modern molecular...
View ArticleFrom potatoes to coffee, plant breeders are changing crops to adapt to an...
We tend to view the effects of climate change through the lens of the worst and most dramatic disasters, from hurricanes and floods to forest fires. But farmers have a more mundane fear: that as...
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