THREAD: 5 years ago, while researching my book Perilous Bounty, I learned that drought wasn't the only climate change-charged specter haunting California's Central Valley, probably the most productive agricultural region on earth. Drought's opposite, mega-flood, also looms. 1/n 2/n I learned that in the winter of 1861-'62, barely a decade after the US grabbed California, rain pounded the region for 65 straight days, causing a flood that put the entire Central Valley under 10-20 feet of water. The catastrophe largely vanished from public imagination...

1/ Tesla reminds me a lot of the flashy players of the faux-burger biz. They wowed Silicon Valley & Wall Street w their "disruptive tech" they pitched as "secret sauce" ... apnews.com/article/techno… 2/ ... but then it turned out that even tho people like faux burgers, churning them out doesn't require a lot of pyrotechnics; and people aren't willing to pay a huge premium over some bog-standard well-seasoned soy patty. So even though the category keeps growing, you get this:

THREAD: If you want to understand why Iowa's water is toxic, and why the Gulf of Mexico succumbs to vast fetid algae bloom annually, carefully read @RiverRaccoon's latest indispensable post. www2.iihr.uiowa.edu/cjones/make-am… Basically, farmers dramatically over-fertilize—in the form of synthetic nitrogen, mined phosphorus, and overabundant manure from factory-scale farms—because it's cheap insurance for maximum yield. Predictably, said fertilizer runs off farms and fouls water.

One context for this travesty is the massive power retained by the hard right in NC, even after losing two governor elections.

https://twitter.com/jelani9/status/1395090404404510720

.@nhannahjones was denied tenure by the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, which “reviews and approves tenure applications,” reports @NCPolicyWatch ncpolicywatch.com/2021/05/19/pw-…

As Uncle Joe himself would say, come on, mannnnnnn

https://twitter.com/liz_crampton/status/1335985200900272132

Let's do a trip down memory lane of the USDA in the Vilsack era. Here's what I wrote when Obama picked him 12 years ago. grist.org/article/more-o…

Remember the "food computer," the mini-vertical farm the big brains over at MIT Food Lab hyped as a world-feeding panacea? Turns out, the lab was dumping nitrogen-laced water, running afoul of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection propublica.org/article/mit-me… I mean look, farms in the Corn Belt get to dump all the nitrogen-laced water they want; why should agriculture-disrupting tech bros have to comply with some regulation? (Of course, one of vertical ag's promises is supposed to be no water pollution.)

I went to Iowa & Illinois in early June to get a sense of how farmers in the corn belt are dealing with climate chaos. I found a landscape largely bereft of spring cover—and serious, mind-bending soil erosion caused by relentless spring rains. motherjones.com/food/2019/06/c… The midwest “corn belt” is one of the globe’s four big-stores of prairie-derived soils (mollisols): highly fertile black earth, prime for growing crops. We’re losing soil there at something like 16 times the natural replenishment rate.

THREAD: So the @EPA has come out with its "First-Ever Comprehensive Nationwide PFAS Action Plan," concerning those very nasty and ubiquitous Teflon chemicals, and—SPOILER—it's a nothingburger /1 motherjones.com/food/2019/02/e… Key q1 is whether EPA will use regulatory might to keep them out of drinking water. It's been dithering 20 years—yes, since before Trump handed EPA to lobbyists—but pressure has been mounting. The new plan punts—decision "by the end of the year."/2 epa.gov/newsreleases/e…

Thread on soybeans, the trade war, and the US ag system. Trump has articulated no coherent economic rationale for his trade aggression toward China, so it's prob the case of a nativist demagogue conjuring a yellow menace to whip up his angry-white base before a big election. 1/ Many pixels have been spilled, by me included, on the contradiction that the main casualties of Trump's trade jihad have been people generally within his base: large-scale commodity farmers. 2/