Grocery Prices Set to Rise as Soil Becomes 'Unproductive' Published Dec 16, 2024 at 10:52 AM EST Updated Dec 16, 2024 at 5:37 PM EST America Has A Farming Crisis By Emma Marsden Freelance News Reporter What's New Experts are warning of a looming increase in grocery prices as agricultural soil becomes increasingly unproductive. In a concerning trend that could impact households across the globe, the combination of overfarming, climate change and insufficient sustainable practices has left vast swaths of farmland degraded and unproductive, threatening food supply chains and driving up costs. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 33 percent of the Earth's soils are already degraded and more than 90 percent could become degraded by 2050. Why It Matters According to the FAO, soil erosion "occurs naturally under all climatic conditions and on all continents, but it is significantly increased and accelerated by unsustainable human activities (up to 1,000 times) through intensive agriculture, deforestation, overgrazing and improper land use changes. "Soil erosion rates are much higher than soil formation rates," the FAO said. "Soil is a finite resource, meaning its loss and degradation is not recoverable within a human lifespan." A map previously published by Newsweek predicts that 95 percent of America's soil will be degraded in less than 30 years. Only a 5 percent area is marked not degraded. A large area of soil erosion caused by water runoff over the years on June 16, 2021, near Buellton, California. Experts predict soil erosion and degradation will increase grocery prices in the U.S. George Rose/Getty Images What to Know Soil degradation reduces the ability of farmland to sustain crops, forcing farmers to invest in costly artificial fertilizers and other interventions—or, in the worst cases, abandon their fields altogether. Experts point to several key drivers behind declining soil productivity. Overfarming strips the soil of essential nutrients and leads to erosion. Additionally, rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and extreme weather events exacerbate soil erosion and salinization. Another factor is deforestation. Clearing land for agriculture reduces organic matter in the soil and destroys ecosystems that support fertility. Staple grocery items such as bread, fresh vegetables and meat could see significant price hikes going forward. Produce and grains are directly impacted by soil fertility, while the rising cost of feed grains for livestock drives up meat prices. What People Are Saying "In the U.S. between 2016 and 2024, the Consumer Price Index for food has increased year on year," said former regenerative farmer Anand Ethirajalu, a project director at the Save Soil Movement and the Rally for Rivers Project. In fact, 2022 saw the highest annual increase since 1979, with food-at-home prices rising by 11.4 percent. "While food prices rise, the topsoil in the U.S. is declining. These two things are intrinsically connected. The U.S. loses billions of metric tons of topsoil annually—impacting food systems and costing the nation $67 billion each year. "These depleted soils lead to reduced crop yields, forcing farmers to rely on costly fertilizers and irrigation, which drive up food production costs and, ultimately, consumer prices. "Healthy soil is the foundation of our food security, yet it is increasingly vulnerable to erosion, nutrient loss and climate change. When soil becomes unproductive, it not only threatens our food supply but also farmer's livelihoods. "By taking immediate action to restore and protect our soils—through practices like regenerative agriculture, integrating trees, crops and animals—we can help future-proof food prices, and enhance the resilience of farms and farmers to climate and market risks. "Protecting our soil isn't just an environmental priority; it's an economic and social imperative." In an emailed statement to Newsweek on Monday, a representative for the FAO said: "FAO does track with the FAO Food Price Index the price at point of export of major commodities. That, however, accounts for a passingly small share of the American household retail price so we don't like to correlate. "Soil damage is a major risk. FAO assessments suggest the 2022 food price jump was a post-COVID one. [It] may have had to do with repairing global supply chains and relatively loose monetary policy in the USA and elsewhere. "That said, the view on fertilizers is widely shared with FAO. In fact, members have asked FAO to add a FAO Fertilizer Price Index to the Food index above, and shortly we will do that. Again, on a global level. "I am not sure there is evidence of depleted crop yields in the USA yet due to soil. There are lurking issues due to excess fertilizers and one day also depleted aquifers. Not just in the USA. "The US State Department is very eagerly promoting FAO's work on "soil maps" in hunger-impacted countries [Central America, Ethiopia, others] so both parties agree this is hyper-important." What Happens Next While the outlook is mixed, solutions are within reach. Farmers and policy-makers are advocating for sustainable agricultural practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), planting cover crops provides multiple benefits, including controlling erosion. These types of methods help restore soil health, improve carbon sequestration and reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers. Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gas levels and mitigate climate change According to Farm Together, practices such as reduced tillage, crop rotation and no-till farming can enhance soil health, lower costs and support long-term farm value. Additionally, innovations like regenerative agriculture and soil-monitoring technologies could offer hope for reversing the damage, along with subsidies for farmers adopting greener methods. Update 12/16/24, 11:31 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the FAO. https://www.newsweek.com/grocery-prices-set-rise-soil-becomes-unproductive-2001418
December 11, 2024 Saving Everything Else For about the last two years I have been making daily posts on social media that include a daily “moment of doom” and a daily “doom quote.” The moment of doom usually comes from Google’s news feed, after I do a search on a variety of word combinations, beginning with “climate doom,” followed by “climate ocean,” “climate atmosphere,” “climate extinction” and so on. After deciding on the day’s moment of doom, I then look over my climate change library (53 books and growing) and consider which book might contain a quote relevant to the moment of doom. For the last few months I have found myself stumbling over the same two titles as I scanned the books and being simultaneously aggravated and motivated by them. And yes, I am judging these two books in their entirety by their titles. But let me tell you, their titles deserve both this judgment and my aggravation. Today, at long last, I am letting motivation win over aggravation and am writing this short essay to explain. What are those two books? The first one is “Saving Us” by Katharine Hayhoe, published in 2021. I bought a used hardcover copy while volunteering for the Planned Parenthood book sale. I paid $4. Maybe my copy should have been re-titled “Saving Us from the Landfill,” as that’s where it was headed when I picked it out from the day’s discard pile. The other book is “Saving Ourselves” by Dana Fisher, published in 2024. I paid full price for this book — which is 143 pages of expository writing followed by 54 pages of notes. Note to self: the page of notes I just flipped to in order to find something interesting to quote here is no different from any other of the 53 pages of notes and contains nothing quotable. So, what’s the aggravation? The central theme of these two books is identical. They both focus on saving us, ourselves … humans. To both of them, we live on The Planet of the F&%king Bloody Ignorant Apes, and hells bells, we’re going to save it for those bloody apes, be it simply by talking to the apes real nice-like, or by a planetary shift in bloody ape consciousness as the furnace of doom descends. Here’s a quote from Hayhoe: “Because it’s so scary and so contentious, we don’t talk about it. And if we don’t talk about it, why would we care? In this book, I want to give people the tools to have constructive conversations about why these issues are relevant to all of us, and how we can work together for change.” There’s nothing wrong with talking to other people about climate change. But humans are a cancer, “homo ecophagus” and no amount of talking is going to shut down this disease before it ravages every corner of every ecosystem that contains some mineral resource, energy resource or fertile land that can be exploited to propel further growth. Moreover, Hayhoe’s solution of talking is beyond hypocritical. Hayhoe is a Christian climate scientist preaching the gospel of talking to others while blocking nearly everyone on social media who dares to disagree with her message of hope and optimism by discussing worst-case scenarios. When Hayhoe blocks those who bring up the scary parts, she is perpetuating the very silence she claims to be fighting against. And it’s worth remembering that there are individual, institutional and governmental actors whose primary goal is nothing more than to talk — to mock, obfuscate, troll, harrass and create doubt. We live in an age of massive information overload, where knowledge has become spam and opinions have become facts. Experts are competing against frauds, shills and trolls to sway policy. Talking? That era is over. Next comes Dana Fisher, with her apocolyptic optimsm and “AnthroShift” idealism, that at some point things will get sufficiently f&%ked up that humans will experience a “social tipping point” and take collective action. She focuses her optimism on the societal changes that took place during the early days of COVID-19, when global action was taken to slow the spread and safeguard us all. That’s AnthroShift. In her own words: “The AnthroShift is like other perspectives that consider risk as a social pivot — when the sense of risk is strong enough, people change their behaviors and push social actors to respond to remediate the risk.” But what I recall from the early days of COVID-19 were mask protests, illegal gatherings, people ignoring social distancing, infection parties, and people dying in the name of personal freedom, as I expressed in my poem, The Asshole’s Final Love Song. Maybe Fisher forgot about China welding people shut inside their apartments. Maybe she forgot about the rise of anti-vaxxers. Maybe she forgot about Trump acting out against his own COVID policies. Maybe she forgot about the Wuhan lab conspiracy theories. Maybe she forgot about the demonization of Anthony Faucci. Maybe she forgot that the 7% decline in CO2 during the first COVID year of 2020 is less than the decline that we need every year going forward, and yet CO2 emissions will be at a new all-time high in 2024. Maybe Fisher forgot about the famine, drought, disease and war in Africa and elsewhere in the third world; massive emergencies and political upheaval that have been going on for decades, yet no AnthroShift in sight. Maybe Fisher forgot about the backfire effect, which is a cognitive bias where beliefs are strengthened in the presence of evidence that contradicts or debunks them. For example, Trump 2.0. Climate scientist Bob Kopp concisely summarized the problem with using social tipping points in the context of climate change in this YouTube video: “We would love to say, okay, there are a few warning lights on the Earth-system and they’re going to be blinking and then we’re going to do something as like a global society acting as a unified actor under the advice of these very enlightened Earth-system scientists… but that’s not the world we live in.” As Fisher admitted, “It is conceivable that the level of shock required to get us to an AnthroShift will involve sections of the world becoming uninhabitable, leading to mass migration as well as pain, suffering, and death around the world.” I’m aggravated that these two authors would have the vanity and arrogance to write about saving humanity as if this polycrisis were resolvable with a cookbook method for how to clean a burned pan and a few phone calls to friends and relatives. The book that needs to be written, and I am not the one to write it, has the title “Saving Everything Else.” The main thesis of the book comes from Derrick Jensen, that: “Committed activists have brought the emergency of climate change into broad consciousness, and that’s a huge win as the glaciers melt and the tundra burns. But they are solving for the wrong variable. Our way of life doesn’t need to be saved. The planet needs to be saved from our way of life” In our global collective effort to save something, we are solving for the wrong variable. The wrong variable is “humanity.” The right variable is “everything else.” If by chance humans manage to still have a place on this planet after the dust settles from the implosion of modern industrial civilization, so be it. But up first will be the melting of the ice sheets, the death of coral reefs, the tipping of the Amazon to savannah, massive permafrost and ESAS methane releases, the AMOC collapse, sea level rise, lethal wet-bulb temperatures, acidification of the oceans, novel viruses, superstorms and the sixth great extinction. And in perfect concert with these accelerating environmental catastrophes will be accelerating human catastrophes, including fascism, civil war and revolution, as countries and individuals move to protect themselves from the rising tide of collapse. It’s not about saving us. It’s not about saving ourselves. It’s not about saving our ability to eat whatever we want, to buy more crap, to travel to distant places, to have a good job, to send our kids to college, to pollute, to consume, or even to survive. It’s not about saving modern industrial civilization. It’s not about saving humans as a species. Our moral obligation to this beautiful living planet is to do what we can to save what we can for whatever comes after us. It’s about saving everything else. https://climatecasino.net/2024/12/saving-everything-else/
The article talks about how environmental and political crises are closely connected and accelerate each other. It explains why these problems arise simultaneously and looks at what can be done to mitigate the consequences. It's more about how communities and individuals can act in such challenging conditions Environmental-Political Collapse Accelerates https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-12-12/environmental-political-collapse-accelerates/
Motorcycle-sized tuna fetches more than $1 million at Japan auction By Jay Ganglani, Lisako Neriki Ancheta and Chris Lau, CNN 2 minute read Published 3:18 AM EST, Mon January 6, 2025 The head of a 276-kilogram bluefin tuna that was auctioned for 207 million Japanese yen (about 1.3 million U.S. dollars) at the first tuna auction of the New Year in Tokyo, Japan, on January 5, 2025. Issei Kato/Reuters Tokyo CNN — A bluefin tuna about the size of a motorcycle has been sold for $1.3 million (207 million yen) at Japan’s most prestigious fish market, setting the second highest price on record during its new year auction. Michelin-starred sushi restaurateurs Onodera Group claimed the 608-pound (276-kilogram) fish with its million-dollar bid at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market on January 5, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported. The bid marks the second highest price since the seafood wholesale market, considered the world’s largest, began to collect data in 1999, according to Kyodo. The highest bid on record is $3.1 million (333.6 million yen) for a 278-kilogramtuna in 2019. Vendors from across the country put their best catches up for auction at the market most mornings of the week. But the prestigiousnew year auction carries a special meaning for bidders who converge to vie for the honor of claiming the first batch of the year. “The year’s first tuna brings good luck. We want to make people smile with food,” said Shinji Nagao, the president of Sushi Onodera, cited by Kyodo. A 276-kilogram bluefin tuna that was auctioned for 207 million Japanese yen (about about 1.3 million U.S. dollars). Kyodo/via Reuters The group is behind the Michelin-starred Sushi Ginza Onodera chain with eateries in Tokyo and Los Angeles. It is the fifth consecutive year that the Onodera Group has paid the top price, having forked out over $720,000 (114.2 million yen) for a bluefin tuna at the auction last year, according to Sushi Ginza Onodera’s website. Their latest prize was caught off the coast of Oma in the northeastern prefecture of Aomori, according to Kyodo. The fisherman behind the catch, Masahiro Takeuchi, describedto Japanese mediahow “unbelievably happy” he was. “I’m always worried about how many more years I’ll be able to keep fishing like this,” said the 73 year old, according to national broadcaster NHK. First opened in 1935, the fish market was originally located in Tsukiji and was one of Tokyo’s most popular travel destinations. A 276-kilogram bluefin tuna that was auctioned for 207 million Japanese yen (about 1.3 million U.S. dollars) is carried into an Onodera sushi restaurant. Issei Kato/Reuters It was moved to Toyosu, a nearby man-made island, in October 2019. The relocation was met with mixed reviews: supporters rooted for an upgrade of facilities while critics slammed the loss of its iconic location. Bluefin are the largest tuna, and can live up to 40 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The endangered species migrate across all oceans, can weigh 1,500 pounds and reach 10 feet in length. In recent decades, the populations have declined severely from overfishing and illegal fishing, according to the WWF. https://www.cnn.com/travel/japan-bluefin-tuna-auction-intl-hnk/index.html