Publication archives

We've written about the environmental drawbacks of major increases in corn production in the U.S., particularly related to nitrogen runoff into waterways. But another potential problem is looming.

The U.S. Forest Service in cooperation with the Southern Group of State Foresters has begun a two-year project that will forecast the future of forests on public and private lands.

More than 3 million acres in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country at nearly 17 million acres, will be opened to logging, mining and road building under the new 2008 Tongass Land Management Plan released Friday.

A reported jump in the rate of Amazon deforestation is unproven despite a government crackdown on tree cutting, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in comments published Thursday.

Much of the recent Farm Bill debate has focused on subsidies for rich farmers, but what about government support for some of the largest multinational agribusiness companies in the world? Research released last month suggests that stripping away direct and indirect subsidies benefitting meat and poultry companies could bring dramatic changes to our farm economy.

Consumer advocates have been campaigning for years to curb the use of antibiotics in agriculture, citing studies that show that 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics are administered in low doses - not to treat disease, but to promote the growth of pigs, sheep, chicken and cattle.

Dr. Ian Friedland was sitting at his Mountain View office on a rainy October afternoon when the telephone rang with some long-awaited news: The Food and Drug Administration had just approved doripenem, the powerful antibiotic he had labored over since 2004.