The Latest from AgMag

In recent years, millions of acres of America’s native grasslands have been plowed under to grow corn for ethanol to blend into gasoline. And new research is clearly pointing to the federal ethanol mandate as a main driver of this tsunami of land conversion in the Midwest.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Farming

Farm Policy

Environment

America’s Midwest and Great Plains are often derisively described as fly-over country. And now unblinking, data-collecting satellites soaring over the western Corn Belt have recorded a devastating manmade environmental disaster.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Subsidies

Farm Policy

Environment

Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Agriculture will hold a hearing titled “Drought, Fire and Freeze: The Economic Disasters for America’s Agricultural Producers.”

The ultimate purpose of the hearing remains unclear, but the committee’s website notes that:

This hearing will examine the toll weather disasters have taken on American agriculture – which employs 16 million Americans – and what steps can be taken to safeguard the economy from future catastrophes.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Farm Policy

Faster is better, right? So is it a good thing that it now takes only 59 days for an Iowa lake to undergo a change that once took 631 days? No. Not when we’re talking about how long it takes for a lake to fill up with mud.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Farm Policy

Environment

Water

I need to start by publicly apologizing for not engaging in the debate over genetically engineered crops, technically, genetically modified organisms or GMOs, until two years ago.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Farm Policy

Food

Healthy Eating

The film “Promised Land,” now showing in theaters across the country, plays off the intense national conversation about the relatively new natural gas drilling technology called high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing – better known by its nickname, fracking. The unknown consequences of this technology frame a drama about the moral dilemmas posed when people in small, economically depressed communities confront the promises and pitfalls of resource development.

Key Issues: 

Fracking

Events that used to be called “acts of God” – but that we now realize are increasingly driven by human activity – became the most important environmental news stories of 2012 in the opinion of Environmental Working Group’s staff of scientists, analysts, lawyers, organizers and others. Topping their list was the devastating and ongoing drought that beset much of the United States. As a group, climate-related events – including superstorm Sandy – garnered more votes than any other topic.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Farm Policy

POLITICO reports House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio wants to push the farm bill to next year and not include it any fiscal cliff deal.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Subsidies