Agriculture

"It’s a question that has bedeviled beekeepers across the US in recent years: where has all the honey gone? Scientists now say they have some answers as to why yields of honey have declined, pointing to environmental degradation that is affecting all sorts of bees, and insects more generally."

"Farms across California have had to euthanize several million chickens and ducks in recent weeks, as a wave of avian influenza threatens to upend national poultry and egg supplies."

"As toxic pesticides and vanishing habitats have driven down the populations of bees and other pollinators, some flowers have evolved to fertilize their own seeds more often, rather than those of other plants."

"As the developing world witnesses a boom in road building, a movement to retrofit existing roads is gathering steam. Using embankments, channels, and dikes, so-called “green roads” help control floods, harvest excess water for use in irrigation, and slash maintenance costs."

"A polar bear has been killed by bird flu as the highly contagious H5N1 virus spreads into the most remote parts of the planet."

"With aquifers nationwide in dangerous decline, one part of California has tried essentially taxing groundwater. New research shows it’s working."

"Scores of California farmworkers are dying in the heat in regions with chronically bad air, even in a state with one of the toughest heat standards in the nation."

"Meat processing giant JBS SA and three other slaughterhouses are facing lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in environmental damages for allegedly purchasing cattle raised illegally in a protected area in the Brazilian Amazon."

"Federal regulators are discouraged from speaking up about potentially dangerous pesticides, according to a former agency official."