Crops

Each summer, nearly 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) of rice is cultivated in the Florida Everglades Agricultural Area, a roughly 1,100-square-mile (2,800-square-kilometer) area south of Lake Okeechobee. Farming here requires a delicate touch. The area has lost nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) of soil in the past century through a process called subsidence. One way to slow down this subsidence and preserve the nutrient-rich soil is to flood the area during Florida’s rainy season and use the fields to grow rice. The fields are flooded using water from adjacent canals. Once the water dries up or seeps away, the rice is harvested. The Conversation asked Associate professor Jehangir Bhadha, an expert in soil sustainability at the University of Florida, how the university got involved with growing rice and what environmental benefits it’s produced. What is the history behind growing rice in the Everglades? Rice was grown in the Everglades Agricultural Area for a brief period...

With the arrival of spring in North America, many people are gravitating to the gardening and landscaping section of home improvement stores, where displays are overstocked with eye-catching seed packs and benches are filled with potted annuals and perennials. But some plants that once thrived in your yard may not flourish there now. To understand why, look to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent update of its plant hardiness zone map, which has long helped gardeners and growers figure out which plants are most likely to thrive in a given location. The 2023 USDA plant hardiness zone map shows the areas where plants can be expected to grow, based on extreme winter temperatures. Darker shades (purple to blue) denote colder zones, phasing southward into temperate (green) and warm zones (yellow and orange). USDA Comparing the 2023 map to the previous version from 2012 clearly shows that as...

Cotton is one of the most valuable crops grown in the U.S., with a harvest value of some US$7 billion yearly. It is cultivated across a crescent of 17 states stretching from Virginia to California and is used in virtually every type of clothing, as well as in medical supplies and home goods such as upholstery. Cotton grows inside a hard, fibrous case called a boll. About 100 days after planting, the bolls mature and split open, revealing thousands of fluffy white fibers inside. Each boll contains 20 to 40 seeds with fibers attached to them, which is why the cotton plant’s fruit is called seed cotton. Picking cotton manually, as is still done in some major producing countries, is a meticulous task. Workers have to bend to reach the bolls and can hurt their hands on hard, dry parts of the plants. To harvest the seed cotton, they have to grab and twist it to separate it from the boll without leaving fiber behind. Starting in the 1930s, cotton farmers in the U.S. shifted f...

If you stand at practically any point on Earth, there is water moving through the ground beneath your feet. Groundwater provides about half of the world’s population with drinking water and nearly half of all water used to irrigate crops. It sustains rivers, lakes and wetlands during droughts. Groundwater is a renewable resource, but it can take decades or even centuries for some aquifers to recover after they are depleted. Current understanding of this challenge is based mainly on where and how frequently people record measurements of water levels in wells. In a newly published study, our team of data scientists, water specialists and policy experts compiled the first global-scale dataset of these levels. We analyzed millions of groundwater level measurements in 170,000 wells located in over 40 countries and mapped how groundwater levels have changed over time. Our study has two main findings. First, we show that rapid groundwater depletion is widespread around the worl...

They go by many names – pigs, hogs, swine, razorbacks – but whatever you call them, wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are one of the most damaging invasive species in North America. They cause millions of dollars in crop damage yearly and harbor dozens of pathogens that threaten humans and pets, as well as meat production systems. Although wild pigs have been present in North America for centuries, their populations have rapidly expanded over the past several decades. Recent studies estimate that since the 1980s the wild pig population in the United States has nearly tripled and expanded from 18 to 35 states. More recently, they have spread rapidly across Canada, and these populations are threatening to invade the U.S. from the north. The wild pigs in Canada are unique because they were originally crossbred by humans to be larger and more cold-hardy than their feral cousins to the south. This suite of traits has earned them the name “super pigs” for good reason. Adu...