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Mariangela Hungria, a microbiologist in Brazil, spent decades looking for bacteria in the soil that could act like fertilizer, boosting farmers' harvests. But she faced a lot of skepticism. "When I started my career, everybody was like, 'You're crazy! You will never succeed. This will never be possible,'" she recalls. Today, her work was rewarded with the World Food Prize, which recognizes advances in agriculture and nutrition. Bestowed by the World Food Prize Foundation since 1987, it comes with a cash award of $500,000. Hungria has spent her entire career as a scientist with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA),...

Inflation poses severe challenges for emerging market economies. The latest example is in Peru, where social unrest spreads across the country, forcing the government to impose a curfew in the capital, Lima, on Tuesday, according to Reuters. “The cabinet has agreed to declare a ban on the mobility of citizens from 2 a.m. through 11:59 p.m. of Tuesday, April 5, to protect the fundamental rights of all people,” Peruvian President Pedro Castillo said in a live broadcast last night. The South American country was already struggling before commodity prices jumped to record highs because of the Ukraine invasion and virus...

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution. "As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I...

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is one of cinema’s most enduring classics, a sentimental yet profound exploration of how one person’s contributions ripple through a community. The story’s alternate timeline, where George Bailey never existed, paints a grim picture of what life would be like without his sacrifices. Inspired by this tale, let’s imagine an alternate reality of a different sort—a world where fossil fuels never existed. Could we, like George’s Bedford Falls, find ourselves in a global Pottersville? Let’s explore how the absence of fossil fuels might affect the very fabric of our lives, from economic systems to...

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory bodes well for US-Morocco relations. As King Mohamed VI recalled in his statement congratulating Trump on his election win, during his first term, Trump recognized Rabat’s full sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Trump made this recognition with a presidential proclamation on December 10, 2020, in exchange for Morocco reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel. In his statement, Mohammed VI went on to say that “the Moroccan people will forever be grateful” for this recognition, calling Washington “our longstanding friend and ally.” While Morocco hopes to pick up where it left off in negotiations with...

Human poop can reveal more than you might think, even when it's really, really old. In a new study of a Central American Maya civilization, samples of ancient feces have shown how the size of this community varied significantly in response to contemporary climate change. Researchers identified four distinct periods of population size shift as a reaction to particularly dry or particularly wet periods, which haven't all been documented before: 1350-950 BCE, 400-210 BCE, 90-280 CE, and 730-900 CE. In addition, the flattened poop piles show that the city of Itzan – which in the modern day would be in...

Jusper Machogu, a farmer in Kenya, Africa, wants people who think Africa shouldn’t develop with fossil fuels to see what a low-carbon lifestyle is really like. He and his family live it every day, and he told Cowboy State Daily that people, especially those of the West, don’t really grasp what it means not to have access to energy. In an effort to combat global emissions, wealthy nations are trying to discourage African countries from using fossil fuels, which Machogu said that will keep Africa in poverty. That’s why he’s offering an educational tour of his low-carbon lifestyle, which he...

A 750ft cargo ship has sunk in the Red Sea days after Yemen's Houthi rebels said they launched a blistering drone attack on the vessel, reportedly killing one mariner on board. Dramatic footage released by the group shows the moment a barrage of rockets slammed into the MV Tutor, with a direct hit triggering a huge explosion after striking the centre of the defenceless coal carrier. It would be the second ship sunk as part of the rebels' campaign targeting Red Sea shipping after the Rubymar, which was carrying more than 41,000 tonnes of fertiliser, went down in March around...

A fertilizer spill into the Nishnabotna River containing 1,500 tons of a liquid nitrogen solution is annihilating the aquatic wildlife in the river, including the portion in Missouri. According to Ecological Health Unit Science Supervisor with the Missouri Department of Conservation Matt Combes, the spill has affected 60 miles of the Nishnabotna River, including the 10 miles in Missouri. Combes said the spill has led to a near total fish kill, with an estimated 40,000 fish dying in the Missouri portion. "That included catfish of the size that anglers like to catch and shovelnose sturgeon... and blue suckers and other...

A railcar carrying 60,000 pounds of Dyno Nobel ammonia nitrate, a chemical fertilizer that also can be used to make explosives, left Cheyenne full and arrived two weeks later in California empty. (Jimmy Orr, Cowboy State Daily) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nearly a year after 30 tons of ammonium nitrate went missing on a train ride from Cheyenne to an old salt mining town in California, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is still investigating where and how the explosive fertilizer vanished. “The FRA investigation is still being finalized,” a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s FRA told Cowboy State Daily in an...

ADEN, Yemen, March 2 (Reuters) - The Rubymar cargo ship, attacked last month, has sunk in the southern Red Sea, Yemen's internationally recognised government said in a statement on Saturday. If verified, it would be the first vessel lost since Houthi militants began targeting commercial shipping in November. [ed., Sinking has since been verified by multiple outlets including UK maritime shipping office.] The government statement said the ship sunk on Friday night and warned of an "environmental catastrophe". The ship was carrying more than 41,000 tons of fertilizer when it came under attack, the U.S. military's Central Command previously said.

Iran-backed Houthis sunk a British ship in the Red Sea on Monday and attacked two US ships in the Gulf of Aden. The US is also investigating a US Reaper drone that crashed in Yemen on Monday. According to reports: “The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations Agency (UKMTO) reported Monday that the Houthis sunk a ship traveling in the Red Sea , south of the port city of Mukha in Yemen. It is the the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza that a crew had to abandon their ship because of the Houthis.”

The crew of a Belize-flagged, British-registered cargo vessel have abandoned ship off Yemen after it was hit by missiles fired by the Houthi movement.

Many Minnesotans on social media seemed slightly confused about the manure-like odor that wafted through the state this week. “Every fall, I pretty much smell it. And just because of my nature, the nature of my work, I noticed that pretty quickly,” said Melissa Wilson, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, who specializes in manure nutrient management and water quality. Experts like Wilson say it’s a fairly straightforward phenomenon, and it actually happens quite often. Come fall, farmers across the region lay out fertilizer in anticipation of the winter. “We’re actually taking the nutrients that are generated from the...

The European Commission has decided to restrict the provision of flexibility on nitrates rules affecting more than 3,000 Irish dairy and beef farmers from the first of January. Many farmers may have to reduce stocking rates as a result. The farmers have been availing of a nitrates derogation that allowed them higher stocking rates on their farms. But that arrangement was dependent on Ireland delivering on a commitment to improve water quality. The Government has failed to do this. The commission’s response means that, from next year, the farmers affected will have three ways to meet the new, reduced limits...

The American Plant Food Corporation’s fertilizer plant in Bartlett, Texas, near Round Rock, reportedly caught fire around 8:30 p.m. on August 20th. The plant has since burned to the ground.The Bartlett Volunteer Fire Department received a call to come put it out at 9901 North Highway 95. The fertilizer plant is said “vital to the local community” and to Texas state.Because of voluminous hazardous and highly flammable chemicals at the plant, firefighters decided it was best to not try to extinguish the flames with water as they typically would for other types of fires. “Hazard crews were on site all...

@wideawake_media Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore, on the genocidal consequences of Net Zero: “Now they’re going into agriculture and threatening to cut off the supply of food, because food is causing global warming… Only the billionaires will be able to afford to buy food, and now all the other people will die because there’s not enough food. That’s what we’re heading for if we continue to listen to these people.” “They will cause a ruination the likes of which the Earth has never seen, because there are over eight billion of us, and four billion of us depend on nitrogen...

In November 2022, four eminent scientists issued a theoretical physics paper, “Nitrous Oxide and Climate.” It proves that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s “war on nitrous oxide” to achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050 threatens to cause a significant collapse in the world’s food supply.The article’s four authors are eminent men in their field, so their analysis and opinion deserve to be taken very seriously: (1) C.A. de Lange, a physicist at Vrije Universiteit, in Amsterdam; (2) J.D. Ferguson, an M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, with a specialty in developing computer models of the effect...

Investigations are reportedly underway as 60,000 pounds of toxic ammonium nitrate have been reported missing while being transported from Wyoming to California.An empty railcar was found at a rail stop in the California Mojave Desert, two weeks after it had departed its initial location.Multiple entities have announced through their representatives that The Federal Railroad Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission, Union Pacific, and Dyno Nobel (the company responsible for the transport) are looking into the incident.On May 10th, the report was sent by Dyno Nobel to the government National Response Center, or NRC. Last Wednesday, the report was published in...

We’ve seen a few concerning train stories under the Biden administration and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, including the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that caused environmental damage in the town. Despite Joe Biden making a bizarre comment and then saying he would go, he has yet to visit the town. The administration hasn’t exactly inspired a lot of confidence with the way they have been handling things and they’ve caught a lot of justifiable flak for their delayed and deficient reaction to the disaster. Now add to that a truly weird story on their watch. About 30 tons — or...