Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

For her Smith Fellowship research, Melissa Cronin will complete a project titled, “Conservation and Food Security Implications of Large- and Small-Scale Fisheries Interactions”. The Smith Fellowship seeks to identify and support early-career scientists who will shape the growth of applied conservation science.

“I was initially pretty skeptical of the entire idea [of pivoting to fertilizer],” Kevin Kung says. “I didn’t think it was feasible. But the local team really proved me wrong and has validated the improved yield and the impact on farmers. For me, it’s been an inspiring journey.”

Meredith Niles and co-authors conducted a Northern New England survey in March-June of 2021 to understand the initial and continued impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security, health behaviors, and health outcomes. A total of 988 adults (562 in Maine and 426 in Vermont) responded regarding food access and availability, health behaviors such as diet composition and exercise, and use of habit-forming substances (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, etc.) before and in the year following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Key findings include:

Scientists are working to understand "the chaotic cascade of dynamics that causes a dust storm to initiate a particular point in space and a particular point in time," says Thomas Gill.

Fix asked 22 climate and justice leaders about the changes they see coming in tech, infrastructure, food, energy, and culture in 2022.

Millions of poultry died and thousands of pigs and their waste was washed into local waterways by the millions of gallons, with negative impacts for the health of environmental justice communities and local ecosystems.

Globally, we generate $120 billion of agricultural waste every year. What farmers cannot sell, they often burn, with catastrophic consequences for human health and the environment. Takachar has developed a cheap, small-scale, portable technology that attaches to tractors in remote farms. The award-winning machine converts crop residues into sellable bio-products like fuel and fertilizer, and reduces smoke emissions by up to 98%.

Michael Wironen co-authored an Info Note on CGIAR exploring the implications of the climate metric Global Warming Potential (GWP) for methane mitigation in agriculture. Key takeaways include: