Agriculture

Identifying Our Climate Foodprint

A look at the entire food system and opportunities to shift to a climate-friendly system. The industrial model of farming with massive resource intensive inputs for crops and livestock is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the food system.

How to Build a Climate-Friendly Food System

Sustainable practices in agriculture, combined with the development of local food systems, can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. food system, finds a new paper by IATP.

Agriculture: the next challenge for climate talks?

IATP's Anne Laure Constantin is in Bonn, Germany, this week for global talks to develop a new international framework to address climate change. The Bonn meeting is leading up to the larger global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Farm Leader Merle Hansen Died March 27, 2009

A dear friend of IATP has passed away. Merle Hanson was a farmer whose gentle and loving way taught a whole generation of farm activists what democracy meant.

The G-20's Opportunity on Commodities Exchange Regulation

When the Group of 20 heads of state meet later this week in London to discuss responses to the global financial crisis, one item directly affecting global food and energy security will be missing from the agenda: the regulation of commodity exchanges.

Spring!

Devin Foote is a 24-year-old beginning farmer at Common Ground Farm in Beacon, New York. Throughout the growing season, Devin will be chronicling his experiences as a young farmer growing for a local food system. March 24, 2009

Why Don't We Have Sustainable Agriculture Now?

Dr. Richard Levins, Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and former IATP Senior Fellow, gets to the heart of one of the biggest challenges we face in agriculture. In a March 1 speech at Iowa State University, Dr.

Rep. Slaughter Reintroduces Bill to Help Fight Antibiotic Resistance Crisis

WASHINGTON -- Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW) -- a national coalition of health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane, and other advocacy groups with more than ten million supporters -- today welcomed the reintroduction of a bill that would help combat the antibiotic resistance crisis by targeting the overuse of antibiotics important to human medicine in animal agriculture.

Water at the Center

On Sunday, the New York Times Alexei Barrioneuvo wrote about the disastrous water wars in Chile. The article highlighted the dangers of privatizing something that should remain in the public commons, but also described the direct link between water policy and agriculture.

Integrated Solutions to the Water, Agriculture and Climate Crises

This report outlines the connections between the water, agriculture and climate crises and the role industrial agriculture has played in contributing to the problem. Because these three areas are so inter-connected they can no longer be handled in isolation from each other and a comprehensive approach is now needed.