Climate Change, Plant-Based Beverages and Organic Food Fraud

Hello March! Spring is just around the corner and I am absolutely ready for it! Spring brings budding trees, greener grass, blooming flowers, and lots of New Mexico wind! Depending on how wet your spring is it can also bring mushrooms. An article released a couple of weeks ago hints that mushrooms may be yet another ally to the world in filtering our carbon emissions!

This Week in Agriculture

Rewilding forests with fungi is the latest way that companies such as JBS will be able to offset their carbon emissions. The carbon offsetting industry has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, with more than 90 percent of projects approved by the world’s leading certifier, Verra, found to be largely worthless. Pending a technological miracle, forests are the globe’s greatest carbon-sucking allies. For better or worse they make up the bulk of ‘nature-based’ carbon offsets. So how do we support our trees, while at the same time tightening up the company's green plans that rely on them?

Dr. Colin Averill, who is part of a research team at Zurich University, has shown that the reintroduction of wild soil microbial biodiversity can accelerate plant growth by an average of 64 percent.

“An entire galaxy exists below our feet, made up of millions of species of bacteria and fungi,” says the ecologist and climate scientist. These microscopic organisms have profound effects on forest growth and carbon capture that until now have been overlooked as a way to accelerate natural climate solutions while restoring essential microbial biodiversity to our soils.” In order to sink as much CO2 as possible, Averill’s company, Funga, is using modern DNA sequencing and machine learning technology to put the right native, biodiverse communities of mycorrhizal fungi in the right places. From a biodiversity perspective alone, more fungi are good news.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this initiative in the comments!

Read the full story here:?https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/02/20/funga-how-does-the-worlds-first-fungi-powered-carbon-removal-project-work

Let’s Discover Ag

This week on Discover Ag, Natalie and I are covering everything you may or may not know about how climate change is making tampons (and lots of other stuff) more expensive, the USDA Moves to Stop Organic Food Fraud and Soy, Oat, and Almond Drinks Can Be Called Milk, F.D.A. Says.

Tune in on YouTube or listen to the episode at the link below!

Listen here: https://pod.link/1615443750/episode/5e8a99659aef6dfda2a3ed2695aa0379

As Seen On….Peak Human

Back in January, Natalie and I were invited to speak on the Peak Human Podcast with Brian Sanders to chat about a range of topics including

• Nuances of the ranching solution
• Breakdown of farm sizes and stats in the US
• The majority of people have been fed the propaganda that meat is the enemy
• How has the quality of milk/meat changed? Can cows actually eat corn and non-traditional diets.
• Meat based diets are making a comeback and gaining traction over veganism.

It was such a great episode, I hope you’ll tune in.?

Listen Here: https://peakhuman.libsyn.com/part-182-natalie-kovarik-and-tara-vander-dussen-is-walmart-beef-milk-healthy

Advocacy Resource

The EPA has prepared the Inventory of the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks since the early 1990s. This annual report provides a comprehensive accounting of total greenhouse gas emissions for all man-made sources in the United States, including carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere by “sinks,” from the management of lands in their current use or as lands are converted to other uses. The gasses covered by the Inventory include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride. To read this year's most up-to-date report you can view it here: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks

Thank you for being here and if there’s something you’d like to hear opinions on or learn more about, you can find me on Instagram at @TaraVanderDussen or feel free to join the conversation on the Discover Ag Instagram. Have a great weekend everyone!?