As foreign interests buy up American agricultural land, lawmakers want to keep certain countries out.
Agriculture
The European Green Deal seeks to increase the amount of farmland that is being managed to produce organic crops to 25% by 2030. The practice is more environmentally friendly but often produces lower yields.
Over the course of the next year, lawmakers on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees will draft a new federal farm bill that will shape food, farm, conservation and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years.
Watershed’s Deborah Haak-Frost writes, “Permaculture is a way to approach things like gardens and ecosystems, but it’s equally as valuable a tool for understanding and designing community dynamics, social relationships, and one’s inner, emotional workings.”
For decades, scientists have studied the effects that livestock farms with large animal concentrations in Iowa and other states have on regional water quality, as increasing amounts of waste flow into rivers and groundwater. Now activists and some lawmakers say emergency measures are needed to stop toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, and threats to drinking water in rural communities. In some states, lawmakers worry about the future of smaller family farms.