By The Economic Times.  Excerpt: Sheep grazing beneath solar panels not only boosts farmer profits but also leads to purer wool. This innovative approach creates shaded environments that retain moisture, thereby enhancing pasture conditions during droughts. Research highlights an increase in nitrogen levels in grasses found under panels, which contributes to improved digestion for the sheep. Nevertheless, successful integration of grazing with solar farms demands careful site planning, influenced by regional and seasonal factors....  Full article at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/us/news/an-australian-farmer-put-sheep-beneath-solar-panels-he-reported-15-more-wool-and-green-grass-surviving-through-drought/articleshow/133296849.cms . 

By Sydney Cromwell , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Maine’s farms contribute almost the entirety of the United States’ commercially sold wild blueberries. The industry harvested nearly 88 million pounds of fruit in 2023, bringing $361 million in revenue to the state, according to the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine. ...Maine’s wild blueberry populations are caught in a climate hotspot, driven partially by rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine.... According to 2021 research , the state’s blueberry barrens are warming faster than the rest of the state, especially in locations closer to the coast. In response, the berries are ripening sooner, and farmers can miss part of their harvest if they’re caught unaware. [Lily] Calderwood [a wild blueberry specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension] said the crop was traditionally harvested in early or mid-August, but now most fruits are ready by late July. High heat also makes the harvest window shorter, she said, meaning farm...

By TAMMY WEBBER  and  JOSHUA A. BICKEL , Associated Press.  Excerpt: CHRISTIANA, Tenn. (AP) — From a distance, the small solar farm in central Tennessee looks like others that now dot rural America, with row upon row of black panels absorbing the sun’s rays to generate electricity. But beneath these panels is lush pasture instead of gravel, enjoyed by a small herd of cattle that spends its days munching grass and resting in the shade. Silicon Ranch, which owns the 40-acre farm in Christiana, outside of Nashville, believes cattle-grazing is the next frontier in so-called agrivoltaics, which mostly has involved growing crops or grazing sheep beneath the panels. The solar company debuted the project this week and will spend the next year working to demonstrate to farmers that much larger cattle also can thrive at solar sites. If successful, advocates say, that could jump-start new projects to meet the soaring electricity demand driven by rapidly expanding data centers — with...

By Dan Charles , NPR.  Excerpt: A  mammoth solar farm  is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most. Farmers are among the project's backers. They don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it. "We're farmers, and we would rather farm the ground," says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family's business. "If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don't. You have to deal with the cards you're dealt."...  Full article at https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5726411/farmers-california-san-joaquin-valley-solar-farm-westlands-water-district-golden-state-clean-energy . 

By Savannah Gupton ,  Mark Bradford ,  Alex Polussa ,  Sara E. Kuebbing  and  Emily E. Oldfield , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In the modern era, the necessity to adapt has led to expansive land use, fertilization, irrigation, and other agricultural routines—powered primarily by combusted carbon and freshwater extractions—to suit local environmental conditions and meet demands of growing populations. These practices have been a boon to food supplies, but have also contributed to many of today’s  climatic  and  environmental   challenges . ...the  Paris Agreement  ...  legally binds  participating nations to implement land use methods that mitigate emissions and actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. One such set of  modified land management practices , known collectively as climate-smart agriculture [ U.S. Department of Agriculture , 2025], is lauded as a pragmatic, low-barrier pathway to manage climate change through natur...

By David Gelles , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Paul Lightfoot ...general manager of Patagonia Provisions, ..believes that Kernza, a type of wheatgrass that can be used for baking and brewing, has the potential to change the food system. [Deep} roots are what makes Kernza so unusual, allowing it to absorb more carbon dioxide than many crops, and turning it into a theoretical ally in the fight against climate change. And because Kernza is a perennial grain and doesn’t need to be replanted each year, it requires less water and fertilizer than traditional wheat, making it a boon for cost-conscious farmers....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/business/patagonia-provisions-dirtbag-billionaire.html . 

By Annika Inampudi , Science.  Excerpt: The crowd gathered in an auditorium in the Swiss village of Villars on Tuesday applauded as, one by one, three scientists—two women and a man—stepped onto the stage to accept a plaque and their prize of 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) for research into solutions for the ongoing climate crisis. It marked the first time in the Frontiers Planet Prize’s (FPP’s) 3-year history that a woman, let alone two, has won. ...This year’s lineup—Arunima Malik, a University of Sydney sustainability researcher; Zahra Kalantari, an environmental and geosciences engineer at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology; and Zia Mehrabi, a climate and agriculture data scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.... Kalantari,  whose work focuses on reducing the carbon footprint of cities . And Malik’s winning paper, about the  sustainability of supply chains and global trade routes , was written with multiple women as co-authors.... Mehrabi’s winning...

By Andrew Chapman , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: California produces more than a third of the vegetables and three quarters of the fruits and nuts in the United States. But water constraints are leaving more and more fields unplanted, or “fallowed,” particularly in the state’s famed farming hub, the Central Valley. In a study  published in  Communications Earth and Environment , researchers showed that these fallowed agricultural lands are producing a different problem: dust storms, which can cause road accidents and health problems and can have far-reaching environmental impacts. Using remote sensing methods, the team found that 88% of anthropogenic dust events in the state, such as dust storms, come from fallowed farmland. California’s  frequent droughts  could mean a rise in fallowed farmland....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/fallowed-fields-are-fueling-californias-dust-problem . 

By Erik Stokstad , Science.  Excerpt: Rice plants usually love warmth. But when they start to flower, hot nights can result in meager harvests and chalky grain. So far, breeders have made slow progress in solving these challenges, which are becoming more urgent with climate change. Now, after searching for more than a decade, researchers in China have found a culpable gene, which they describe this week in  Cell . They also show that a  natural variant of the gene can preserve both yield and rice quality  when temperatures rise....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/major-breakthrough-natural-gene-variant-protects-rice-heat-waves . 

By Ki-Weon Seo et al, Science.  Excerpt: When hydrologists Dongryeol Ryu and Ki-Weon Seo saw their results, they were stunned. “ At first we thought, ‘That’s an error in the model,’ ” Ryu told  The Associated Press . But their findings held up to scrutiny:  The water stored on land has been disappearing  . In the last two decades, more than 2600 Gt (billion metric tons) of water that used to be stored in soil, snow, and freshwaters has permanently moved into the ocean, they report in  Science . ...“How climate warming affects Earth’s hydrological cycle—the continuous water movement between Earth and the atmosphere— is a key question for managing water resources and making weather predictions  ,” writes hydrologist Luis Samaniego in an accompanying Perspective. To get a figure they could trust, Ryu, Seo, and their colleagues had to integrate three long-term, global datasets—ones that track water storage anomalies, sea level changes, and the movement of the E...

By Robert F. Service , Science.  Excerpt: If humanity wants to avoid a climate catastrophe, sucking up the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) it has already spewed into the atmosphere may be its last hope. One approach is to use naturally abundant minerals as CO 2  sponges, but the process is slow. Now, a study  reported in Nature  suggests a way to accelerate it: by converting those minerals to compounds that bind CO 2  faster and are similar to others already widely used in farming. ...direct air capture (DAC)...requires building expensive CO 2  capture plants and consumes some 2 megawatt hours of energy for every ton of CO 2  wrung from the air. ...Another approach is  carbon mineralization : spreading vast amounts of crushed alkaline rocks—usually abundant magnesium silicates, such as olivine and serpentine—on soils worldwide. The pulverized rock binds CO 2 , permanently locking it away in mineral form. Nature already performs carbon mineralization o...

By Matt Simon , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...cows are really gassy, and that’s really bad for the planet: Microbes in their guts produce methane—a greenhouse gas up to  80 times more powerful  than carbon dioxide—which comes out as burps. Consequently, livestock is responsible for  30 percent  of humanity’s methane emissions. ...Rice cultivation, surprisingly enough, accounts for another 12 percent of humanity’s global methane emissions. ...Growing rice requires flooding fields, called paddies, with staggering quantities of water. Microbes known as archaea multiply in the wet, oxygen-poor conditions, releasing methane. One way to reduce those emissions is to inundate the fields less often, but that’s not always feasible given local irrigation infrastructure, and less water can lead to reduced yields. ...Now, though, scientists have gone to the source, announcing a breakthrough in breeding a variety of rice they say reduces methane emissions by 70 percent—while deliveri...

By Yifan Gao et al, Joule.  Paper summary: Although ammonia production is crucial for global agriculture, it comes with substantial carbon footprints. [ammonia production is the chemical industry’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter] Here, for the first time, we propose and demonstrate a different method for stimulated (proactive) and  in situ  geological ammonia (Geo-NH 3 ) production directly from rocks. Our approach demonstrated that NH 3  can be efficiently generated by reacting natural (Fe,Mg) 2 SiO 4  (olivine) minerals with nitrate-source water at 130°C–300°C and 0.25–8.5 MPa, and even at ambient temperature and pressure. Using both actual rocks and synthetic mineral Fe(OH) 2 , we investigated mechanisms and optimized conditions through experiments and theoretical calculations. We revealed the basic chemistry enabling Geo-NH 3  production: Fe 2+  contained in rocks reduces the nitrate source to NH 3 . Our approach, involving only the injection...

By  Dan Charles , Science.  Excerpt: ...“This is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Verburg, a land use researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. Global trade in food has fueled the clearing of forests in Brazil and Bolivia for agriculture, but elsewhere it has sidelined small farms with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water. “People give up because they cannot compete,” Verburg says. ...Farmers, or their children, are walking away from land in Eastern Europe, southern France, South Korea, Japan, and mountainous parts of India. It’s difficult to measure the exact extent of the trend. Land is often abandoned, then reclaimed and farmed again. But an estimated  120 million hectares  have been left fallow in Europe alone since 1990. Globally,  the figure since 1950  could be as high as 400 million hectares—half the area of Australia. “Abandonment will continue, I think there’s no doubt,” Verburg says. In fact, climate change is likely to accelerate it as...

By John Dietz , SuccessfulFarming.  Excerpt: Agrivoltaics, a relatively new term, unites cropping practices and solar panels on the same fields. ...Well-established programs exist throughout Europe, as well as in Japan and China. “Agrivoltaics has emerged as a formal pillar of the energy plan for countries with scarce farmland, including France, Germany, and Italy,” Winter explains. It’s catch-up time in North America. ...[Joshua] Pearce calls agrivoltaics in North America “a slam dunk” opportunity. “A few percent of agricultural land in the U.S. could power the entire country,” he asserts. ...In his latest research paper, Pearce posits that as little as 1% of Canadian farmland could provide a quarter to a third of Canada’s electrical energy needs. ...“You can increase the yield for your crop if you do it right ,” he said in an interview. “You do get more food, and you get the added revenue of the solar. [That’s] why agrivoltaics is growing like crazy in the who...

By Lela Nargi , The Guardian.  Excerpt: ...In February, the [Rio Grande Valley  Sugar  Growers] cooperative announced that it would close its 50-year-old sugarcane processing mill, the last remaining in the state, by the end of this spring. ... Ongoing megadrought  meant there wasn’t enough water to irrigate co-op members’ 34,000 acres of sugarcane, and that effectively puts an end to sugarcane farming in the south Texas borderlands. ...In 2022,  drought decimated  Texas cotton and forced California growers to  idle half their rice fields . Water disputes are also on the rise as decreased flows in the  Colorado River  and other vital waterways  pit state against state ,  states against native nations  and  farmers against municipalities ....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/30/texas-sugarcane-farming . 

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/africas-carbon-sink-capacity-is-shrinking By Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The population of Africa, the second-largest continent in the world, currently sits at about 1.4 billion, but is set to exceed 2 billion by 2040. This means greater swaths of land than ever before are being used for agriculture, and livestock numbers are increasing. A new estimate of Africa’s greenhouse gas budget between 2010 and 2019 quantifies just how much these changes in land use have affected Africa’s role in the global carbon cycle. ...To make their estimates,  Ernst et al.  ...took a comprehensive look at all major potential carbon sources, including human sources such as agriculture and fossil fuel emissions and natural sources such as termites and wildfires. They also considered natural sinks: the  grasslands ,  savannas , and  forests  that still cover much of the continent. The team found that between 2010 and 2019, Africa tr...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/climate/plant-based-treaty-climate.html By Cara Buckley , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Amsterdam ... Los Angeles ...are signatories to the  Plant Based Treaty,  which was launched in 2021 with the aim of calling attention to the role played by greenhouse gases that are generated by food production. ...Anita Krajnc ...and other activists modeled the Plant Based Treaty after the  Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty , which calls on governments to stop new oil, gas and coal projects. ...The first municipality to sign on was Boynton Beach, Fla., in September 2021.... Twenty-five other municipalities have since joined, including Los Angeles, Amsterdam and more than a dozen cities in India. ...Globally, food systems make up a third of planet-heating greenhouse gasses, with the environmental toll of the meat and dairy industries being particularly high. Livestock accounts for  about a third  of methane emissions, which have 80 ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/climate/jbs-ipo-nyse.html By Manuela Andreoni  and  Dionne Searcey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A giant Brazilian meatpacking company is facing persistent opposition to its plans for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange because of concerns about corruption settlements, accusations of Amazon deforestation and its growing market share in the United States. The proposed listing by JBS, the world’s biggest meatpacker, has brought together American beef producers, environmentalists and politicians from both major parties in a rare common cause. ...a dozen British lawmakers  urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to reject the share listing  to “send a clear message that the United States stands firm in its commitment to combating climate change.” ... Research suggests  about 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon is connected to the beef industry. Global meat consumption  is expected to grow 14 percent by 2...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-great-british-seaweed-race-to-save-the-earth By Charlotte Lytton, Daily Beast.  Excerpt: ...97 percent of seaweed farming currently happens in Asia, British companies are looking to muscle in on the $13.3 billion industry. ...A  2021 study from the University of California , Davis found that mixing a small amount of seaweed into cow feed over five months reduced Earth-polluting methane emissions by 82 percent—making it a potential green goldmine....