At first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine's farmers.

Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine's raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.

No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer's wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Two weeks ago, Lisa Moore posted about a dangerous suggestion from Congress and producer groups to allow the penalty-free release of up to 24 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program so the land could be put back into crop production.

Yesterday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer decided again it. Good call! From Sara Hopper, EDF's director of agricultural policy:

Secretary Schafer should be commended for resisting calls to gut the nation’s oldest and most successful farm conservation program. Putting millions of CRP acres back into intensive crop production would have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in taxpayer investments in conservation and caused untold environmental damage, while only minimally boosting crop production and providing little, if any, relief from rising commodity prices.

This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund. You can meet Lisa at the Netroots Nation conference, July 17-20.

Congress and producer groups are pressuring the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to release millions of acres from Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts and open them up to crop production. Supporters say this move would increase production and bring down food prices.

Wrong! Ripping up conservation lands would not make a big dent in commodity supplies or prices, but it would waste billions of taxpayer dollars that have been invested in conservation on these lands.

It also would be a tragedy for wildlife, water quality, and climate.

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This post is by Britt Lundgren, an agricultural policy specialist at Environmental Defense Fund.

Last month I posted about the gridlock over the 2008 Farm Bill, and discussed how different programs in the Farm Bill might impact global warming. The conference report (final version of the bill) has now been issued, and Congress is scheduled to vote on it today.

How did it turn out? The final bill includes important new investments in conservation, but doesn't do enough to expand and improve conservation programs, or reform our antiquated system of farm subsidies.

Here are the details.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Want to know how your lifestyle impacts the environment? Yahoo Green's Lifestyle Calculator (data provided by EDF) estimates your carbon footprint based on factors like the size of your home, and how much you drive and fly. The H₂O Conserve Water Use Calculator asks questions about your habits to assess your water usage (see why saving water saves energy)

But what about the food you eat? Bon Appétit Management Company has a new Low Carbon Diet Calculator that can tell you. It has a very entertaining interface, but how good is it? We asked Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, to check it out.

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This post is by Robert Bonnie, Co-Director of the Land, Water and Wildlife Program at Environmental Defense Fund.

The New York Times recently reported that thousands of farmers are dropping out of the federal government's Conservation Reserve Program. The prices for corn and other crops are so high that conservation subsidies can't compete with what farmers can make by planting the land. One reason for the high prices is the ethanol mandate in the energy bill Congress passed last year.

Shifts in land use from diverting food-producing land to grow crops for energy - called "indirect land-use change" - can potentially negate the environmental benefits of corn ethanol. There is still much debate on how to measure it, but no question it's important to consider. One recent study published in Science (Searchinger et. al.) found that using croplands for biofuels causes a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions relative to gasoline when indirect land use change is taken into account.

Unintended consequences such as these highlight the danger of mandating a specific clean energy technology, and the importance of relying on performance standards instead.

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This post is by Britt Lundgren, an agricultural policy specialist at Environmental Defense Fund.

You may have heard about the gridlock over the 2008 Farm Bill, which was supposed to have been signed into law already, but hasn't yet. Versions of the bill have passed both the House and the Senate. Now the bill is "in conference" to resolve differences over new spending and offsets to pay for the bill.

It's unclear whether the conference will produce a bill that the President will sign. The President has repeatedly threatened a veto, saying he wants more reform of our antiquated system of crop subsidies (a point on which we strongly concur - see my guest post on Grist).

Still, there is much we stand to lose if Congress and the President can't agree on a good a new Farm Bill. The 2008 bill includes significant new funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's voluntary conservation incentives programs and renewable energy programs.

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This post is by Eric Holst, Manager, Center for Conservation Incentives, Environmental Defense.

Everyone can do something to help stop global warming. Here's an example...

When California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), California rice growers wanted to explore ways to lower their net emissions. But exactly how to go about doing this wasn't clear, so Environmental Defense teamed up with the California Rice Commission to work on the challenge.

As in other sectors of agriculture, rice farms both produce greenhouse gas emissions (mainly in the form of methane) and sequester carbon in field vegetation and soils. Our two-year project, launched in October, seeks to develop precise techniques - voluntarily implemented - to reduce emissions and increase sequestration, and to quantify emission benefits.

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This is Part 3 of a three-part series on Food and Farming.

1. Increased CO₂ and Food Quality
2. Farm Animals and Methane
3. "Food Mile" Complexities

The author of today's post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

When it's apple season here in New York and the green markets are overflowing, for a store to ship in apples from Washington State or New Zealand burns fuel for no good reason. Local food is fresher, tastes better, and supports the community. And locally produced food often results in lower greenhouse gas emissions - but not always. The greenhouse gas calculation is complicated, and you can't assume that if a crop is produced locally, greenhouse gas emissions are lower.

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This is Part 1 of a three-part series on Food and Farming.

1. Increased CO₂ and Food Quality
2. Farm Animals and Methane
3. "Food Mile" Complexities

For the second course in our food series, let's start with some pie - specifically, Bill's greenhouse gas pie showing the contribution of different greenhouses gases to global warming. The first chart shows that methane is the second largest contributor to global warming.

Globally, nearly half of that hefty methane slice comes from agriculture. What causes these emissions, and how can we reduce them?

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