Farming destroyed UK rivers to meet food demand – here's how we fix it
20 June 2023
Rivers are awash with manure, fertiliser and pesticides from farming. This is more polluting even than sewage, so what can be done?
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Farmland could feed 20 billion people but it might wreck the planet
10 April 2023
Reaching the maximum feeding capacity from current agricultural land would require a global shift to plant-based diets and vast amounts of industrial fertiliser, a study has found
Vertical farm cuts energy use 75 per cent by using sunlight
7 April 2023
A vertical farm built inside a greenhouse in Texas can produce hundreds of thousands of heads of lettuce with significantly less energy than usual
We can't engineer our way out of the water crisis in the Southwest US
1 March 2023
Ever since Arizona was first colonised, politicians and entrepeneurs have sold residents the idea that human ingenuity can craft a solution to water shortfalls. It can't, argues Natalie Koch
Adding wild fungi to soil could make trees store more carbon
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A loblolly pine plantation in the state of Georgia is the test site for a start-up company trying to see if improving the fungi and other microbes in soil can help trees grow bigger and faster
Ranchers are using GPS-collars to herd livestock with virtual fences
17 January 2023
The US Bureau of Land Management is helping ranchers and farmers in Colorado test virtual fences, which set moveable boundaries controlled by an app, and can keep cattle from overgrazing the range
How California can capture stormwater to fight off the drought
6 January 2023
With atmospheric rivers drenching the US west coast, researchers are testing methods to capture as much stormwater as possible to replenish depleted aquifers
Plant-based hot foam kills weeds as effectively as chemical spray
19 September 2022
A plant-based foam mixed with hot water has worked as well as glyphosate weedkiller at removing weeds from olive groves and has also been used successfully in urban areas
Half of newly irrigated land is in water-stressed areas
18 August 2022
Irrigating more land could help feed 1.4 billion people, but over half of new irrigation projects are in places that are already at risk of running dry
Optimising crop genetics could double global wheat production
7 July 2022
Optimising the wheat genome could help us double yields of the crop, according to plant scientists – although other researchers say they are being too optimistic
