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Turning “Fresh Air” over to pharmaceutical industry insiders to promote shoddily tested mandatory medical products and broadcast unchallenged industry propaganda is not consistent with your show’s proud tradition. I know you value accuracy and integrity, and so I urge you to correct the record.
Bill Gates, the fourth richest person in the world and a self-described nerd who is known for his early programming skills rather than his love of the outdoors, has been quietly snatching up 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.
Our food system has taken hits from COVID-19. You’ve read about it, maybe felt it firsthand. Endless food pantry lines, scrambles to feed kids out of school, and supply chain disruptions for farms and food retail alike. A shuttered restaurant industry. Supermarkets facing food shortages, suppliers figuring out their pivots, farms forced to discard food.
Ron Rosmann’s 700-acre certified organic grain and livestock farm in Shelby County, Iowa is an island in a sea of very large conventional soy or corn operations. Farmers in the area don’t typically pay a lot of attention to the health of their soil—which has, on occasion, eroded onto his property. Others in the area operate concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
India’s supreme court has suspended a series of controversial new agriculture laws that had prompted hundreds of thousands of farmers to stage a months-long protest in Delhi over fears their livelihoods were at stake.
A 2019 survey of 2,000 people in the U.S. crowned corn the new favorite vegetable, with an approval rating of 91%.1 Onions followed not far behind with an approval rating of 87%, making it among the top five favorite vegetables. The survey found some of the least favorite vegetables included asparagus, mushrooms and eggplant.
As a kid, Lauren Lydick would pack up a towel, a Harry Potter book, and head out alone into the bamboo groves. As a teenager, she took a blanket, War & Peace, and weed. Sometimes reading, sometimes just lying on her back looking up through the green, Lydick felt like she could be anywhere. Thailand, maybe, or Malaysia.
Reports of serious adverse reactions to the new COVID-19 vaccines are coming in — and some include deaths. In fact, early reports from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicate that these reactions may be as much as 50 times higher than those for flu shots.
Nearly a year after the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was identified, researchers have yet to determine how it “jumped species” to infect humans. Virologist Étienne Decroly discusses the various hypotheses, including that of an accidental leak from a laboratory.
At a time when researchers are racing against the clock to develop viable vaccines and treatments, why is it so important to understand the genealogy of the virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic?
“Gene editing has the ability to harness the genetic resources that Mother Nature has provided in order to tackle the challenges of our age. This includes breeding crops that perform better, reducing costs to farmers and impacts on the environment and helping us all adapt to the challenges of climate change.”