Tag: <span>agriculture</span>

Growing Up in New York City

Since my last post, my internship has moved from the Manhattan Borough President’s Office to Agritecture. Yes, you are reading that right. It’s a play on agriculture and architecture. Agritecture is a small company based out of Brooklyn with a mission of integrating agriculture with the built environment. In other …

GMOs are not the problem, but they’re part of it

GMOs are a hot topic these days. Get in an argument with someone who’s ‘pro-GMO’, and they’re likely to tell you that we’ve been engineering crop genetics since the dawn of agriculture. This argument certainly has a strain of validity to it. But it fails to account for the fact …

Changing Climates, Changing Palates: The Impact of Climate Change on Global Wine Production

Winos, take notice! For many of us, it can be difficult to discern how climate change will tangibly impact everyday life. If you are an everyday wine drinker (like myself), you might be surprised (and disappointed) to learn that your happy hour beverage of choice is strongly linked to a changing …

A Vision and Strategy for Sustainability

It feels like a challenging time to be working on environmental issues here in the United States as a wave of populism and climate change denial seems to be sweeping the country. To gain some perspective on working toward sustainability goals, I spoke with Professor Sue Hartley. Professor Hartley is the Director of …

Trying to Get By Without Science Direct: Learning a Different Kind of Research

When I moved from the academic setting at Bard to Washington, D.C. to start my internship, one of my biggest adjustments—besides dealing with city living—was learning a new style of research.  I’ve always loved research, but in the past, my research has been primarily focused in databases.  My work experience …

Not Under My Back Yard (NUMBY): Do You Really Own Your Property?

For the past several decades the US has pursued policies that promote energy independence and both energy and national security. As part of this pursuit, high volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technologies were first developed in the late 1940s by Halliburton, and its technological advances after the 1970s have rapidly increased oil …

Less bang for your buck? Climate change makes staple crops less healthy

Imagine the protein content in foods you eat every day decreasing.  Foods that are staples around the world–wheat, corn, rice–all lower in protein and higher in carbohydrates.  Science has already shown that global crop yields will decrease in coming years because they won’t be able to take the heat.  But a …

Climate Change Puts Vermont’s Maple Industry in a Sticky Situation

Maple syrup is more than a sweet treat: to the sugarmakers of the Northeast, it’s a way of life. The tradition of maple sugaring has roots in indigenous culture and the sweet sap continues as a multi-million dollar industry today. But this year’s warm winter and early spring made Vermont’s …

Trip to Japan: Education and Agriculture

Written by Elisabeth Darnell My name is Elisabeth Darnell and I was fortunate enough to receive funding from the Henry Luce Foundation to study organic agriculture in Japan. I graduated from Bard College in the class of 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental and Urban Studies. During my studies, …

What’s in a Number? Setting AFT NY’s 100,000 Acre Farmland Protection Goal

By Sanaz Arjomand, M.S. in Environmental Policy 2016 During my internship with the New York field office of American Farmland Trust (AFT), a national organization whose mission is to protect farmland, promote sound farming practices, and keep farmers on the land, my main responsibility was to work on a report …