Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/author/guest-contributor/)
New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore isn’t called the road less traveled without reason.
Persistent rainfall, exacerbated by global warming, has increased the wetlands in this area of Cumberland County.
A worrisome environmental issue is bubbling up from deep below Michigan’s ground with little public awareness, experts say.
The salinity of the state’s groundwater is on the rise, raising concerns about killed crops and corroded pipes.
Michigan’s corn farmers rejected a recent proposed assessment increase amid low prices, blocking additional funds for research and lobbying.
The proposal would have raised the assessment from 1 cent per bushel to 2 cents.
While the House and Senate have never had a direct, official connection to tribal governments throughout Michigan, new legislation could change that.
A bill would make Michigan the first state with a formal legislative connection with its tribal governments,
A tractor falls on you. A horse kicks you. A cow pins you against the side of a barn. Your hand gets caught in a corn shucker.
These are just some of the accidents Michigan State University researcher Laurel Morano documented in her recent study of agriculture-related injuries – and only among the most dramatic examples of the dangers farmers face every day on the job.
Steve Hall used to call public health “the invisible profession.”
“Previously, when we did our jobs well, people didn’t know about us,” said Hall, who for 10 years has been the health officer for the Central Michigan District Health Department.
When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on expansive recycling reforms in December 2022, she also approved a last-minute amendment allowing chemical recycling — a process decried by many environmentalists — to be classified as a legal manufacturing process.
Chemical recycling, specifically the commonly used plastic pyrolysis process, turns plastic into fuel.
The number of farmhands in Michigan working on H-2A visas — which allow farms that are struggling to hire U.S. workers to bring in temporary laborers from other countries—increased from 277 in 2010 to over 15,000 in 2023, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
Every fish studied recently in two southeast Michigan watersheds contained at least one of a family of toxic and persistent health-threatening chemicals.
The chemicals – collectively known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – are found in some rivers, lakes, soils, drinking water, fish, cattle and crops.
Precision agriculture technology has been evolving over the past decades, and farming has become more productive and efficient with the further implementation of artificial intelligence.
A 2023 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found only 27% of farms and ranches nationally used such precision agriculture practices, but the rate was around 40% in Michigan.