Food & Agriculture Stories
How do we feed a growing and more affluent population without the environmental collateral damage? The Anthropocene’s coverage of food and agriculture digs deep into innovations in farming, aquaculture, filling the global protein gap, reducing the carbon footprint of supply chains, and more.
Rising sales of plant-based meat is not matched by declines in actual meat consumption
A new study finds that a campaign to promote plant-based meat increased sales by 57% . . .but didn’t make a dent in meat consumption.
What’s the dirt cheap, most effective way to rein in fertilizer pollution?
A research team tested various policy options—from taxes to fees to volunteerism—to tackle the problem at its source. Making the "polluter pay” came out as the best option.
Butter Is Toast
Margarine has a significantly lower environmental impact than butter in four important areas: global warming potential (i.e., carbon footprint), eutrophication potential, acidification potential, and land impact
No-till may not be the agricultural panacea we thought it was
The findings, from an extensive survey of soil studies, draws a questions mark over carbon estimates that are used in some IPCC reports.
Leaving crop residues to rot could be an unexpected boon for climate mitigation
Crop residue left on the ground locked up carbon in the soil four times longer than if they were cleared away
Relocating global croplands could produce the same food on half the land with 70% less emissions
Acknowledging that a full-blown global crop reconfiguration is contrived, the researchers then tested more modest and realistic changes. Those were transformative too.
Solar panels handle heat better when they’re combined with crops
New study finds that an optimal arrangement of solar panels on farms can cool the panels down by 10 degrees—crucial for their efficiency.
There’s a massive multi-billion dollar ecosystem just beneath the waves
Until now, there have been no thorough estimates of the value of kelp forests. When researchers recently tallied it up, the figured they came up with was $500 billion a year.
In rich countries, a sustainable diet is cheaper than a conventional one. The opposite is true in poorer nations.
Researchers compared the the cost of eating four sustainable diets—flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian, and vegan—across 150 countries.
What are the world’s 35 biggest meat and dairy companies doing to mitigate climate change?
Drawing on a vast dataset called OpenSecrets, researchers found that the amount that companies spent on lobbying against climate action
generally tracked with the intensity of their emissions
