Agriculture

In late March, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it had detected cases of bird flu in dairy cattle. Initially discovered in dairy farms in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico, there are now 36 confirmed outbreaks in dairy herds…

More subtly, heat influences volatile compounds that turn into gas—that’s the “nose” you get when tasting wine—which break down under higher temperatures. “The profiles tend to get pushed to what sensory scientists would call the…

If you ever watch a duck float across a pond, gobbling up the vegetation coating the surface, that bird is way ahead of its time. The buoyant greenery is azolla, a tiny fern that grows like crazy, doubling its biomass as quickly as every…

Having spent the first two of my eight decades on our family’s small dairy farm in Wisconsin, it was ingrained early and often that hard work and common sense were keys to survival in the agriculture realm.   …

by Fred Lucas   The U.S. Department of Agriculture intends to cultivate the transgender ideology on a global scale using international farm-aid programs. That could mean attaching strings to international grants that the USDA doles out…

If you ever had pastries at breakfast, drank soy milk, used soaps at home, or built yourself a nice flat-pack piece of furniture, you may have contributed to deforestation and climate change.Every item has a price—but the cost isn’t felt…

For Gastón Paladini, pork is a family affair. In 1923, his great-grandfather Don Juan Paladini moved from Italy to Santa Fe, Argentina, where he started putting a South American twist on classic Italian sausage recipes. Eventually, Don…

There’s no denying it: Farming had a rough year. Extreme weather spun up storms and floods, unseasonal freezes and baking heat waves, and prolonged parching droughts. In parts of the world in 2023, tomato plants didn’t flower, the peach…

Five stories off the ground at Colorado State University, a highly unlikely garden grows under a long row of rooftop solar panels. It’s late October at 9 am, when the temperature is 30 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind is cutting. Not long…

But vampire bats represent a new threat because they feed on the blood of other animals. Their usual victims are livestock, and occasionally wild mammals and birds. Using their sharp front teeth, they make a small incision in their…