agriculture – Page 23 – Desdemona Despair

Beth Ford, CEO of Land O’Lakes, spoke on Thursday, 9 January 2020, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ 2020 Regional Economic Conditions Conference. Photo: Land O’Lakes

January 12, 2020

“We will lose rural America” warns Land O’Lakes CEO at annual Fed summit – “The towns are rolling up on us. That is the truth.”

By Joy Wiltermuth 11 January 2020 (MarketWatch) – Rural America needs help. That was the key message from Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., while speaking Thursday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ annual economic outlook conference for the Ninth District. “Farmers want trade. They want a robust marketplace and they […]

Danielle and Jacob Stenger are raising their two children — Colten and Delaney — on a farm near Milford Lake outside Junction City, Kansas. Danielle is a proud ambassador for farming in the state and applauds the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s efforts to help farmers in mental health distress. Photo: Danielle Stenger

January 11, 2020

Kansas state steps in as farmers die by suicide – “The increase in suicide rates among farmers and ranchers is alarming”

By Lisa Gutierrez 28 December 2019 KANSAS CITY, Missouri (The Kansas City Star) – He fought it as long as he could. Mick Rausch didn’t know what was wrong until he finally hit a wall he could no longer climb on his own. It was 10 years ago. His brother — younger by just a […]

A helicopter carries water through smoky skies as it flies near the town of Bilpin, located west of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, on Sunday, 29 December 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

January 7, 2020

Global apathy toward the fires in Australia is a scary portent for the future

By David Wallace-Wells 31 December 2019 (New York magazine) – Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two […]

Global primary energy consumption by region, 2010-2050. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook 2019 reference case. Graphic: EIA

January 3, 2020

EIA projects nearly 50 percent increase in world energy usage by 2050, led by growth in Asia – Carbon dioxide emissions to grow from all three fossil fuel sources

3 January 2020 (EIA) – In its newly released International Energy Outlook 2019 (IEO2019) Reference case, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50 percent between 2018 and 2050. Most of this growth comes from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and […]

January 2, 2020

World Food Programme forecasts global hunger hotspots as a new decade dawns

ROME, 1 January 2020 (WFP) – Escalating hunger needs in sub-Saharan Africa dominate a World Food Programme (WFP) analysis of global hunger hotspots in the first half of 2020 with millions of people requiring life-saving food assistance in Zimbabwe, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central Sahel region in the coming months. […]

This before-and-after image shows satellite images of Lake Kariba, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, in December 2018 and December 2019. The lake has dropped to critically low levels. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

December 31, 2019

Drought threatens millions in Southern Africa – “This year’s drought is unprecedented, causing food shortages on a scale we have never seen here before”

By Michael Carlowicz 17 December 2019 (NASA) – Southern Africa is suffering through its worst drought in several decades and perhaps a century. Diminished and late rainfall, combined with long-term increases in temperatures, have jeopardized the food security and energy supplies of millions of people in the region, most acutely in Zambia and Zimbabwe. According […]

Extreme weather events across the world caused more than $100 billion worth of damage in 2019. The most financially costly disasters were wildfires in California, which caused $25 billion in damage, followed by Typhoon Hagibis in Japan ($15 billion) and floods in the American mid-west ($12.5 billion) and China ($12 billion). The events with the greatest loss of life were floods in Northern India which killed 1,900 and Cyclone Idai which killed 1,300. Data: Christian Aid. Graphic: The Guardian

December 31, 2019

15 climate disasters of 2019 that cost more than $1 billion – “It is no wonder youth around the world are taking to the streets to demand that we write a different story towards a better future”

27 December 2019 (Christian Aid) – Extreme weather, driven by climate change, hit every populated continent in 2019, killing, injuring and displacing millions and causing billions of dollars of economic damage, according to a new report by Christian Aid. […] Counting the Cost 2019: a year of climate breakdown identifies 15 of the most destructive droughts, […]

Water towers of the World: the most important mountainous and glacial regions in the Americas, which serve as the “water towers” for billions living downstream. Data: Walter Immerzeel, Utrecht University. Graphic: Brian T. Jacobs / National Geographic

December 28, 2019

World’s supply of fresh water in trouble as mountain ice vanishes – 1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages – “The most important water towers are also among the most vulnerable”

By Alejandra Borunda 9 December 2019 (National Geographic) – High in the Himalaya, near the base of the Gangotri glacier, water burbles along a narrow river. Pebbles, carried in the small river’s flow, pling as they carom downstream. This water will flow thousands of miles, eventually feeding people, farms, and the natural world on the vast, […]

Study skins of the extinct Lana’i and Kaua’i ‘akiaola. Photo: Paul Sweet / AMNH

December 27, 2019

All of the species declared extinct in the 2010-2019 decade – “The trends that connect these 160 extinctions are true of the biodiversity crisis more generally”

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum 16 December 19 (Gizmodo) – Lonesome George, the last of the Pinta Island tortoises, died in 2012. George’s story is the perfect extinction story. It features a charismatic character with a recognizable face, an obvious villain, and the tireless efforts of naturalists. The population of the Pinta Island tortoise species was […]

Global pattern in the cumulative development of coastal hypoxia in the periods before 1969, 1970-1989, and 1990-2015. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Green dots are sites that have improved. Since the 1960s, the global number of hypoxic systems has about doubled every ten years up to 2000. Data: Based on Diaz and Rosenberg (2008), Diaz, et al. (2010), and Conley et al. (2011). Graphic: Laffoley and Baxter, 2019 / IUCN

December 10, 2019

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

By Fiona Harvey 7 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were […]