Know | Environment.org

On July 11, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year (FY) 2025 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill with unanimous, bipartisan agreement. The Senate Appropriations Committee skipped subcommittee markup this fiscal year, and the full committee’s unanimous approval took less than 10 minutes (59:00 – 1:07:54). This outcome in the Senate stands in contrast to what transpired in the House Appropriations Committee just a day earlier: a roughly two hour long markup (9:51:00 – 11:54:55) that – while significantly shorter than last year’s eight plus hour partisan grind – still resulted in the Committee approving the House’s FY25 Agriculture spending bill along party lines.

At a high level, the Senate bill sets FY25 Agriculture spending at $ 27 billion, an $ 821 million increase over FY24. This increase is primarily directed toward the …

On IRA’s One Year Anniversary, the Top 5 Things to Know About the Historic Investment in Climate-Friendly Agriculture

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| Sustainability

Just over a year ago, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The culmination of years of work, the IRA invested nearly $ 20 billion in climate-friendly agriculture practices. As an organization that represents small and midsized-farmers across the nation, it is difficult to overstate the transformative potential of this funding to support all farmers in building vibrant and productive farms that can contribute to a climate-resilient future.

A year later, however, as Congress stares down the 2023 Farm Bill reauthorization, the future of this historic climate-focused funding is uncertain. While the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has been rolling out IRA’s fiscal year (FY) 2023 funding to farmers and ranchers across the country, some in Congress have begun to consider using the upcoming farm bill reauthorization as an opportunity to …

Is climate change to blame for the Pakistan floods? Here’s what we know.

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| Pollution

This summer, four times more rain than normal fell on southern Pakistan, causing widespread flooding that left a third of the country underwater. The scale is hard to wrap your head around: The deluge has affected 33 million people — 15 percent of Pakistan’s population — and has turned villages into isolated islands. The death toll stands at 1,500.

It sounds like just the kind of unfathomable disaster that wouldn’t have happened without climate change. According to new research released on Thursday, the hotter planet played a role by making the flooding worse — though it wasn’t the only factor.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change likely intensified the overall rain by 50 percent this summer. At the monsoon’s worst — the heaviest five-day period in the southern provinces of Baluchistan and Sindh — …