US Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) is a longtime organic farmer. She’s also a member of the House Agriculture Committee who is calling on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to stop hemming and hawing and, instead, get on the ball to implement recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report … [continued]
More than 300,000 plant-protection drones now perform roughly 203 million hectare-treatments annually in China. The market has moved beyond adoption into service, maintenance, renewal and operating standards.
Agricultural spray drones are no longer an emerging technology in China. They are ordinary farm machinery at extraordinary scale. China entered 2026 with about 309,000 plant-protection drones, and those aircraft performed roughly 203 million hectare-treatments during 2025. A hectare treated three times counts as three hectare-treatments, so that figure measures … [continued]
The walk down the slight incline to the East Falmouth harbor seemed a lot like many other waterfront areas of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. One and two story homes with weathered shingles. Pleasure craft and small commercial boats parked in gravel driveways. A combined aroma of seaweed and salt wafting on … [continued]
Look around your home this evening. The days are getting shorter, and our craving for light means that we are substituting artificial illumination for sunlight. It also may mean that we are unknowingly causing injury to the hundreds of species of birds that are now migrating to their southern homes. … [continued]
The Amendment Will Open No Greater Than 1% of the County to Agrivoltaic Solar Projects LEXINGTON, Kentucky — On Thursday, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted to pass a zoning ordinance text amendment (ZOTA) opening up no greater than one percent of Fayette County, including agriculturally zoned land, for large-scale solar … [continued]
If you’ve been following my work recently, you know that I’ve been celebrating several fine authors who have contributed to a Media Education Lab special issue. The August edition of MediaEd Insights was titled, “What’s for Dinner? Food as an Ecomedia Literacy.” The fourth essay in this series is a … [continued]
"Plant-Based Dishes, Raw Food (29103285347)" by Ella Olsson from Stockholm, Sweden is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
One principle of media literacy involves stepping back from a favored topic and doing a deep dive to figure out what motivates our interest in that topic. Known as metacognition, gaining such critical distance asks us to reflect on our self-knowledge and evaluate the sources that contribute to our perspectives. … [continued]
This summer I invited a group of talented writers who specialize in food systems to participate in a special Media Education Lab publication called MediaEd Insights. Our issue is called, “What’s for Dinner? Food as an Ecomedia Literacy Inquiry.” Our first essay introduced food systems as a way to engage … [continued]
I have been a fellow of the Media Education Lab (MEL) at the University of Rhode Island for a couple of decades. That means I’m part of a community of international, national, and regional leaders who promote media literacy. I’ve run MEL conferences, delivered workshops, co-authored white papers, and collaborated … [continued]
Lexington, Kentucky — On Thursday, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council will hear a zoning ordinance text amendment (ZOTA) that would open up no greater than one percent of Fayette County, including agriculturally zoned land, for large-scale solar development. The ZOTA would require that any such solar projects be “agrivoltaic,” enabling the … [continued]
