Only a month after it announced that it was joining the RE100 initiative and committing to sourcing 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2040, entertainment and electronics giant Sony Corporation has announced this week it is bringing forward its US goal by a decade. [node:read-more:link]
The majority of women reported progress toward gender equality, but 72% said it would take decades to achieve full equality.Women in agriculture say widespread gender discrimination persists and poses obstacles to their ability to help feed the world, according to a new study from Corteva Agriscience, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont. [node:read-more:link]
The sharp partisanship that’s typified North Carolina’s government was buried temporarily on Monday as legislators approved spending $400 million to quickly help people and communities reeling from flooding left by Hurricane Florence and setting aside another $450 million for upcoming needs. [node:read-more:link]
t is the fall harvest here in this fertile stretch of oaks and hills that produces some of the country’s best wine. This season, though, workers also are plucking the sticky, fragrant flowers of a new crop. Marijuana is emerging among the vineyards, not as a rival to the valley’s grapes but as a high-value commodity that could help reinvigorate a fading agricultural tradition along the state’s Central Coast. [node:read-more:link]
Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. [node:read-more:link]
Adopting benchmarks similar to the fuel-efficiency standards used by the auto industry in the production of fertilizer could yield $5-8 billion in economic benefits for the U.S. corn sector alone, researchers have concluded. [node:read-more:link]
American farmers and low-income families are understandably uneasy with the recent expiration of the farm bill, although the eventual passage of another iteration is all but assured. Regardless, we should take a moment to ask what would happen if we repealed farm bill agricultural subsidies instead. The idea may sound fanciful. We’ve had farm subsidies for over 80 years; it’s hard to conceive of an agriculture industry without extensive government intervention. [node:read-more:link]
Basic assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) and Medicaid ensure families have access to food and medical care when they are low-income. Some policymakers at the federal and state levels intend to add new work requirements to SNAP and Medicaid. In this paper, we analyze those who would be impacted by an expansion of work requirements in SNAP and an introduction of work requirements into Medicaid. [node:read-more:link]
What can be harder to decipher is how Americans use their land to create wealth. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure.Using surveys, satellite images and categorizations from various government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture divides the U.S. into six major types of land. The data can’t be pinpointed to a city block—each square on the map represents 250,000 acres of land. [node:read-more:link]
Silo collapse kills one cow and traps 13 calves. A silo containing large amounts of grain collapsed onto one of the main barns at Cherry Hill Farm in Lunenburg, Mass., Sunday morning, trapping 13 calves and killing one cow. The owner and his daughter were inside the barn as the silo began to collapse, however, the two were able to move some of the animals out before the silo crashed. [node:read-more:link]
