https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/bread-baking-sustainable-grain-kernza/ Source: By Sarah Kaplan , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Scientists hope this new kind of perennial grain offers a taste of what environmentally friendly farming could look like. ...Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world. But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alo...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/food-and-farming-could-stymie-climate-efforts-researchers-say Source:  By   Erik Stokstad , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...Even if energy, transportation, and manufacturing go entirely green, emissions of greenhouse gases from the food system would put the world on track to warm by more than 1.5°C, a target set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. For the world to have a chance of preventing significant harm from climate change, the study authors say, all parts of food production need rapid and significant reform—everything from reducing deforestation for new fields to eating less meat. ...Carbon dioxide comes from many sources, such as cutting down tropical forests to make way for fields and pastures, running farm machinery, and manufacture of agrochemicals. Fertilizer also emits nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. And cows release methane, a powerful warming gas, in their burps and manure. ...The team assumed no radical chan...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/climate/farms-climate-change-crops.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times. Excerpt: The damage from the destructive spring flooding in the Midwest has been followed in parts of the country by a miserable autumn that is making a bad farming year worse, with effects that could be felt into next spring. ... many farmers couldn’t get crops in the ground or had to delay planting until perilously late in the season. “Farmers told me in Eastern Illinois it felt like they were in a monsoon from April til May.” It was the wettest year on record for the lower 48 states, with the kind of extreme rainfall events that are increasingly associated with climate change. And then fall came in with unseasonably heavy rains and snow....