Breadbasket

Research on the High Plains Aquifer reveals the critical link between aquifer depletion and crop yields, stressing the importance of efficient groundwater management for agricultural resilience.Yield losses intensify when groundwater dwindles, data shows.Three decades of data have informed a new Nebraska-led study that shows how the depletion of groundwater — the same that many farmers rely on for irrigation — can threaten food production amid drought and drier climes.The study found that, due in part to the challenges of…

Flood causing logistical problems. Credit: Javier Houspanossian A new study revealing that huge expansions of extensive large-scale agriculture is making the South American plains more vulnerable to widespread flooding should act as a "wake-up call," say researchers. The grasslands of the Argentinean Pampas, famously home to the…

UMass Amherst geosciences professor Isaac Larsen standing on the erosional escarpment at Stinson Prairie, Iowa. Credit: UMass AmherstNew research from UMass Amherst shows that the rapid and unsustainable rate of topsoil erosion can be drastically reduced with no-till agricultural methods already in practice.The Midwestern United States has lost 57.6 billion tons of topsoil due to farming practices over the past 160 years, and the rate of erosion, even following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s guidelines, is still 25…

Farmers are transplanting rice in a paddy field in Heilongjiang province, northeast China in Spring. Credit: Xianli Yang Climate models had until recently not been performing very well predicting variation in the spring rainfall over northeast China, home to some of the country's main cereal production. This uncertainty potentially puts the food security of the country—and even the world—at risk. Researchers have however now…

This map shows the distribution of summer and winter crops in Ukraine as of June 13, 2022. It also shows where farmers were operating freely and where their lands were under Russian control. It is based on data from Planet Labs satellites and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 mission that was processed and analyzed by NASA Harvest.<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established…