Mezcal, Mexico’s traditional agave spirit, has enraptured palates across the country and abroad. But as demand soars, a more bitter note emerges: the amount of waste its production generates and the risks that poses for the very environment that sustains it.
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The Billón de Agaves project is an innovative strategy that consists of the association of trees or shrubs of leguminous species interspersed in strips with annual crops or perennial grasses. The woody elements are pruned periodically to avoid producing too much shade for the crops and the pruning is used as green manure for the soil.
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The ‘food transition’ is integral to the ‘great reset’. This transition is couched in the language of climate emergency and sustainability and warnings about the imminent need to address the Malthusian threat of too many people and not enough food to feed nine billion by 2050.
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David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé take us far beyond the well-worn adage to deliver a new truth: the roots of good health start on farms. What Your Food Ate marshals evidence from recent and forgotten science to illustrate how the health of the soil ripples through to that of crops, livestock, and ultimately us.
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The nitrogen problem in Agriculture is a problem created by synthetic nitrogen fertilisers made from fossil fuels. Nitrogen fertilisers contribute to atmospheric pollution and climate change in the manufacture and the use of fertilisers. Nitrogen fertilisers also emit a greenhouse gas, N2O, which is 300 times more destabilising for the Climate System than CO2.
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UC researchers used genetic and pollen analyses to provide the most detailed examination to date of the wild and cultivated plants found in the ancient Maya city Yaxnohcah, which was occupied between 1,800 and 3,000 years ago in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
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In the context of the ongoing debate on biodynamic agriculture, Italian Senator Elena Cattaneo’s recent intervention has caused quite a stir, as she is ready to reopen the courts of the Inquisition, complete with cliché seventeenth-century accusations of witchcraft, alchemy and esoteric practices.
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Amid predictions of climate change driving up temperatures and causing more extreme heat in the Midwest, a new study led in part by University of Maryland researchers has found that growing one particular perennial grass could cut Midwest warming by 1 degree Celsius.
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The line between soil and dirt is anything but fine. Without knowing it, farmers have been stripping the soil of essential nutrients for generations. But now we know, and modern farmers like those at Singing Frogs Farm are reestablishing how our crops are grown, benefiting the environment, community and local economy.
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DESPERATE TIMES — How bad is California's drought? Bad enough to make farmers turn to tequila. About 40 farmers and distillers gathered last week at an inaugural agave symposium at the University of California, Davis, to explore the prospects of growing agave in California and making alcohol from it.
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