Sustainability has become an important attribute for agricultural systems with many activists falsely asserting that extensive farming has a smaller environmental footprint. Now research by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (ICTA), an organization focused on making small farms in developing countries both competitive and sustainable, has issued ratings that favor the larger, intensive agricultural practices of rich countries.
What is notable is that India’s agriculture ranks amongst the least sustainable systems despite being largely vegetarian in consumption and highly incentivized for extensive farming practices. CIAT weighed 20 different factors including greenhouse gas emissions, fair trade, food price volatilit...
The corn and soy complex closed higher, with the wheat market mixed, as winter wheat closed up but spring wheat and livestock ended lower. Part of the strength for corn and soybeans may have been a weather premium, as crop planting has started out fast but warm weather has been slow to develop...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Reflect for a moment on what you eat. There is a lot of advice out there in the ether about what you should eat, but really, what do you currently eat and how much? The good people at the USDA have some data for you, to help you answer that question. USDA says that we eat quite a bit of meat. L...
