Growing Returns

Selected tag(s): agriculture

To slow climate change, we must measure livestock methane accurately

By Mallory Honan / Bio / Published: May 6, 2025

Reducing methane emissions, a climate super-pollutant, can lessen rates of warming within decades. Since livestock farming is one of the biggest emitters of that methane gas, with enteric methane from cow burps alone contributing about a third of all human-caused methane emissions each year, lowering it can have a big impact.

To reduce livestock emissions, we first have to know where we’re starting. That requires accurate and validated measurement, but measuring methane from livestock isn’t simple — how we do it matters. These are the most important considerations.

Celebrating the groundbreaking of a natural infrastructure project to combat flooding in North Carolina

By Michelle Lovejoy / Published: March 28, 2025

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) joined North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) at a groundbreaking event today to celebrate the progress of a new and significant natural infrastructure pilot project.

The Stoney Creek pilot project is an innovative approach to utilizing natural infrastructure and nature’s processes to address flood risk in the City of Goldsboro and in the greater area of Wayne County, North Carolina. Moreover, it is a major step forward in advancing community flood resilience across the entire state.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Also tagged flood resilience, flooding, hurricane, resilience | Comments are closed

Animal health is key to healthy people and planet

By Peri Rosenstein / Published: March 13, 2025

Maintaining animal health isn’t only an essential practice for livestock farming, though any farmer or rancher will agree that’s true. It’s also a way to lower the methane intensity of the meat and dairy produced by livestock and improve health and livelihoods for people, which is particularly important for smallholder farmers in low-income countries.

Livestock farming contributes more than one-third of human-caused methane emissions, a powerful super-pollutant responsible for much of the additional warming and extreme weather the world is facing. At the same time, animal agriculture both provides critical nutrition and supports the livelihoods of millions of families, benefits that are now at risk due to heatwaves, droughts and other climate impacts.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged agricultural methane, animal agriculture, farmers, food production, methane, resilience | Comments are closed

Without financing solutions, farmers have to leave money — and environmental benefits — on the table

By Guest Author / Published: March 11, 2025

This op-ed was originally published in Hoard’s Dairyman. Since its initial publication, the financial uncertainty for farmers engaging in conservation practices has grown substantially. Ongoing trade negotiations, tariffs and blocked funding for existing U.S. Department of Agriculture contracts for conservation expenses and the uncertainty of future funding for conservation programs intensify the financial challenges faced by dairy farmers.

Dairy farmers are already part of a high-risk industry — the experience shared below shows how difficult it can be to align funding opportunities with farms’ financial needs. Now, farmers are being left to absorb that risk with less support. To continue producing food for their communities and responsibly stewarding natural resources, farmers will need more flexibility from financial institutions and greater investments from stakeholders advancing sustainable agriculture.

By Alice Crothers

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged climate resilience, farm finance, farmers, farming, farms, food, food production, food security, sustainability | Comments are closed

Four takeaways from a year of global action on food, agriculture and climate

By Jennifer Chow / Bio / Published: December 16, 2024

Global leaders increasingly recognize that agriculture and food systems must be part of solutions to the climate crisis. From the first Food Systems Pavilion at a UN climate conference in 2022, to 160 countries recognizing food and agriculture as a climate imperative in 2023, food advocates came into the 2024 UN climate conference, COP29, with wind in our sails. We made progress, but the world needs to do more — and quickly.

As we close out the year and look ahead to COP30 in late 2025, significantly more work remains to ensure farmers, fishers and ranchers can feed a growing population and lower climate pollution from food systems.

Here are four reflections from EDF and our partners about the progress made this year and the urgent work that remains to make farms and food systems more resilient, sustainable and equitable.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Also tagged Climate, COP29, food | Read 1 Response

New Report: How high-quality carbon offsets can lower livestock methane emissions

By EDF Staff / Published: September 23, 2024

Authors: Erin Leonard and Maggie Monast

With more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after its release, methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gasses. One major contributor to global methane is livestock operations — 32% of methane emissions from human activity come from livestock and animal agriculture.

The good news is that methane’s massive warming potential also creates an opportunity for a big and rapid impact if we can mitigate those emissions. To avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to rapidly lower livestock methane emissions, a process that requires support and incentives to help farmers and ranchers adopt changes in their businesses.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged agricultural methane, carbon credit, climate change, farmers, farming, food production, livestock emissions, livestock methane, methane reduction, new report, ranchers, resilience | Comments are closed

Closing the enteric methane emissions innovation gap: A call for funding high-quality research

By EDF Staff / Published: May 23, 2024

By Peri Rosenstein and Nicole Jenkins

Methane emissions are a potent greenhouse gas, warming the climate more than 80 times faster than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale. Rapidly and significantly reducing methane is the most effective way to reduce the rate of warming, especially over the next few decades.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged agricultural methane, agriculture research, climate change, climate resilience, farmers, food production, methane, research, research funding, sustainability | Comments are closed

Good manure management must involve ammonia emissions, too

By Mindi DePaola / Published: May 8, 2024

When it comes to livestock and environmental impacts, methane emission reductions are often top of mind — and for good reason. Lowering methane emissions from animal agriculture is one of the fastest ways to slow down climate change. However, important local air pollutants like ammonia are seldom discussed with the same frequency or urgency.

Agriculture needs a path forward that jointly addresses its global climate impacts and its local environmental and public health impacts in an equitable way. Methane and ammonia must be managed in tandem. Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged climate change, climate resilience | Comments are closed

Revisiting a centuries-old approach to farming that embraces water scarcity.

By afajardoanstine / Published: December 7, 2023

As discussions at COP28 wrestle with climate impacts on global food and water security, we hear from a Hopi farmer on his thriving practice of dry farming and his hopes for shared learning in Dubai.

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The arid climate of the Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona receives a mere 8.5 inches of annual rainfall. For perspective, the yearly United States average is 30 inches. Despite this severe aridity, for over 3,000 years, the Hopi people have stewarded an extraordinary agricultural tradition centered on dry farming.

Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is an Indigenous Resiliency Specialist at the University of Arizona and a leading practitioner of Hopi dry farming — a form of agriculture that eschews irrigation in regions with limited water moisture. As a 250th-generation Hopi dry farmer, his ongoing traditional practices are a testament to the power of cultural values and the potential of climate-adaptive farming. These ongoing Hopi farming practices defy modern notions of crop needs and vulnerability in areas with limited irrigation and water supply.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Also tagged climate change, climate resilience, colorado river, conservation, drought, environmental defense fund, farmers, food production, sustainability, water quality, water use | Comments are closed

Water is a high-level priority at COP 28, we need to look to ground-level users for solutions

By Ann Hayden / Bio / Published: November 30, 2023

Water has finally reached the highest levels of global climate negotiations. The path to a sustainable freshwater future, however, lies with ground-level users. At COP 28, EDF is elevating their voices, their needs and the approaches they find most useful.

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While greenhouse gases drive climate change, many of its impacts are inherently liquid. Whether through drought, flood, sea-level rise, or contamination, water increasingly forms the turbulent core of the climate crisis.

Over the past year, this basic reality was finally acknowledged at the global planning table. Thanks to a strong push from its Egyptian hosts, last year’s edition of the main UN climate conference, COP 27, made water a central theme. The cover decision — the summation of the conference’s key agreements — featured water and food for the first time. The decision acknowledged the central role of water in countering climate impacts and called for water-related targets in national climate planning.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Also tagged climate change, climate resilience, conservation, cover crops, drought, environmental defense fund, sustainability, water quality | Comments are closed