Agriculture

"The gene bank can hold as many as 120,000 varieties of plants. Many of the seeds come from crops as old as agriculture itself. They're sown by farmers in the Fertile Crescent region, where cultivation began some 11,000 years ago. Other seeds were deposited by researchers who've hiked in the past four decades through forests and mountains in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, searching for wild relatives of wheat, legumes and other crops that are important to the human diet."

"Growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty, according to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Agricultural Organization and other United Nations agencies."

"It's not possible to remove all traces of lead from the food supply, because the heavy metal is found throughout the environment and can be absorbed by plants. So traces are found in the vegetables, fruits and grains that are used to make baby food. But as toxic metal exposure can be harmful to developing brains, the Food and Drug Administration is issuing new guidelines to reduce children's exposure to the lowest level possible."

"A chaotic start to the new Republican-led House may spell trouble for the 2023 farm bill."

"The letter from Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was greeted like an act of war in California’s Imperial Valley."

"Just 1.3 percent of homeowners in the state have national flood insurance policies."

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday he filed a challenge against the new EPA and Army Corps of Engineers definition of which waterways and wetlands are subject to federal permitting requirements."

"A top water expert at Arizona State University began the year with a demand in a newspaper Op-Ed column directed at incoming Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs: Immediately release a state report on groundwater in Buckeye, one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S."

"When plague struck black-tailed prairie dogs in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming in 2017, a huge die-off followed. It spelled disaster for the burrowing rodents. But for researchers, it provided an opportunity for a “natural experiment” in the consequences of a single species’ collapse."

"Three years of drought have dried up Tunisian reservoirs, threatening harvests that are critical to the North African country's battered economy and pushing the government to raise tap water prices for homes and businesses."