Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/category/environment/page/2/)
Of 400 pesticides used on agriculture crops across the U.S, glyphosate is used at least three times more than all others, according to an analysis of data estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Some agriculture experts fear old mistakes are being repeated as farmers rely more on the weed killer dicamba.
Farmers have been using the weed killer glyphosate – a key ingredient of the product Roundup – at soaring levels even as glyphosate has become increasingly less effective and as health concerns and lawsuits mount.
Communities in Missouri have been fighting the expansion of large-scale livestock operations in the state for years. But a controversial pair of bills moving through the state legislature would make community oversight of those farms even harder.
A new federal review of the health impacts of glyphosate, a weed-killer known more commonly as RoundUp, acknowledge that while more research was needed – it could not rule out a link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The latest findings from a study of drinking water wells and their surroundings finds manure from cows that is stored or spread on farm fields poses the highest risk for certain contaminants.
A dozen grassroots organizations have challenged a USDA rule change that would make medium-sized animal confinements exempt from environmental review before receiving government-backed loans from the Farm Services Agency.
Recent actions by the GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration have exempted big livestock farms from reporting air emissions. The moves follow a decade-long push by the livestock industry for exemption and leave neighbors of large-scale operations in the dark about what they’re inhaling. If that weren’t enough, environmental advocates warn that the failure to monitor those emissions makes it even harder to assess the climate effects of large-scale agriculture.
“See that brown building, to the left of the tree line? That’s the University of Dubuque. And a little further left, you can kind of see that little ridge, you can see it better some days, that’s the Platteville ‘M,’” John Foster, administrator for the Dubuque Metropolitan Area Regional Landfill, said, referencing the Wisconsin border-town’s landmark: a large white M on the side of a mound, by the Mississippi river. Foster was standing in Dubuque at the top of a closed landfill cell, one of nine cells the landfill has planned for the more than 600 acres around him — enough to last the Dubuque area in eastern Iowa through the century. But smaller landfills in Iowa have not fared as well as Dubuque’s the last 24 years, since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created federal rules on issuing permits that municipal landfills have to follow.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a first-of-its kind pill that reduces the amount of ammonia gas emissions in beef cattle and their manure. However, some critics are doubting its overall effectiveness.