The most recent assessment of 14,669 threatened European plant and animal species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species has found that 19 percent are at risk of extinction.

Some of the main reasons for the decline in biodiversity are habitat loss, changes in agricultural land use, overexploitation of natural resources, pollution and commercial and residential development.

“It is perhaps most important to remember that whether the figure being used by policy- and decision-makers is 1 million or even more – the urgency and priority of the global biodiversity crisis remains,” said Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), as The Guardian reported. “We are losing biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people at rates never before seen in human history.”

The study examined a variety of species living in Europe, including mammals, trees, snails, reptiles and ferns.

The species the scientists studied represent about 10 percent of the plants and animals living on land or in marine or freshwater environments in Europe, a press release from the Public Library of Science said.

The researchers found that 27 percent of plant species, 24 percent of invertebrate animals and 18 percent of vertebrate species were threatened with extinction. The number of invertebrate species at risk is much higher than the most recent estimates by IPBES.

“These numbers exceed recent IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) assumptions of extinction risk. Changes in agricultural practices and associated habitat loss, overharvesting, pollution and development are major threats to biodiversity. Maintaining and restoring sustainable land and water use practices is crucial to minimize future biodiversity declines,” the authors of the study wrote.

The study, “A multi-taxon analysis of European Red Lists reveals major threats to biodiversity,” was published in the journal PLOS One.

Adding to the concern for invertebrate and plant species is that scientists don’t know enough about most of them. The researchers could not even analyze the conservation status of a quarter of invertebrate species due to lack of data, according to a press release from London’s Natural History Museum (NHM). European bees have been relatively well-studied, for example, but 57 percent of them were determined to be “Data Deficient.”

“The threats for freshwater invertebrates will be similar for most of them, such as water pollution and eutrophication,” said Dr. Dmitry Telnov, curator of beetles at NHM, in the museum’s press release. “For terrestrial invertebrates, it is very likely that one of the common threats will be the use of chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides. It is obvious that insecticides will kill most of the insects, but it is perhaps less obvious that it will also be affecting soil fauna like snails and earthworms. But we have very little information about that.”

The researchers called for more investment and action to counter the loss of biodiversity, as well as further research.

“This study shows we have a very high proportion of species which are threatened with extinction, but we can do something about it,” said the study’s lead researcher Axel Hochkirch of the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Luxembourg, as reported by The Guardian.

Hochkirch pointed out how effective conservation efforts had been for large predators in Europe, like wolves, bears, lynx and white-tailed eagles.

“We see whenever conservation action is taking place, these improvements happen,” Hochkirch said.

The post Nearly 20% of Europe’s ‘Red List’ Species Face Extinction, Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

While Antarctica has not lost as much sea ice as the Arctic, as global warming progresses, the continent has been losing its ice at a faster rate.

In a surprising new study, scientists from The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) found that sea ice loss in Antarctica causes an increased amount of snowfall over its ice sheets, which leads to them contributing less to global sea level rise, reported Penn State.

“The Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) is the largest freshwater body on Earth and is a major component of the sea level budget. Since the start of the satellite record in 1980, the AIS has been losing mass at an increasing rate. These losses are attributed to increased flow of ice into the ocean and are partially balanced each year by the accumulation of snow across the ice sheet’s surface. The degree to which it snows across Antarctica therefore controls how much the ice sheet contributes to sea level in any given year,” the authors of the study wrote. “Importantly, our findings show that sea ice declines in this region lead to enhanced moisture in the atmosphere which is then transported over the West Antarctic ice sheet resulting in greater snowfall.”

The study, “Identifying the Impacts of Sea Ice Variability on the Climate and Surface Mass Balance of West Antarctica,” was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists looked at how decreased sea ice in West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea affected the surface of the ocean. They found that when it was free of ice, there was more atmospheric moisture, which led to heavier amounts of snow falling on the AIS, Penn State reported.

Luke Trusel, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of geography at Penn State, said there was not enough snowfall to offset the effects of ice melt, but including the additional snowfall in climate models could improve forecasts of sea level rise.

Trusel explained that dramatic processes such as calving — when chunks of ice break free from the ice sheet — often get the most attention, but more discreet events like snowfall can be consequential.

“For a place like Antarctica, which is just massive, the amount of snow falling on top of the ice sheet is as important or even more important than other processes like meltwater or ice breaking off,” Trusel said, as reported by Penn State. “We’re tracking both snowfall and melt to understand both ends of the equation — what takes from sea level and what gets returned to the ocean. We want to know how those factors are impacting the ice sheets.”

Most of the snowfall in Antarctica comes from evaporating ocean moisture, but sea ice plays a crucial role in regulating the process.

“Sea ice is significant,” said Jessica Kromer, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Penn State, as Penn State reported. “It reflects sunlight, aids in cooling the planet and influences interactions between the atmosphere and ocean, including oceanic evaporation. We found that precipitation varies so much year to year. In some years, precipitation can take away from sea level or lessen the impact of the ice discharged from the sheets.”

The researchers used climate data along with satellite observations in their analysis of the relationship between the atmosphere, ocean surface and mass of Antarctica’s ice sheets. They found that during periods when sea ice was reduced, more moisture was retained by the atmosphere. When the moisture reached the colder boundaries of the ice sheet, it condensed, leading to an increase in snowfall.

The researchers said the findings suggest that shrinking levels of sea ice will increase evaporation over the ocean as global temperatures rise, leading to precipitation over the Antarctic continent. Sea levels will still rise, but the increase in snowfall can temporarily mitigate it.

“With global warming, there’s an expectation of reduced sea ice,” Trusel said, according to Penn State. “As sea ice diminishes, there could be increased evaporation from the ocean leading to more precipitation over Antarctica. While this might appear to offset the loss of sea ice, the implications are multifaceted. Increased snowfall in Antarctica might slow the sea level rise, but it’s essential to recognize that the ice sheet will continue to contribute to rising sea levels.”

The researchers pinpointed a feedback loop between water vapor and sea ice. When the ocean surface is free of ice, evaporation is intensified, which contributes to more water vapor. The increase in moisture leads to a local amplification of the greenhouse effect, leading to increased downward longwave radiation, which then reduces sea ice the following month.

Kromer said recent satellite data indicated important changes in sea ice patterns.

“While Arctic sea ice has been rapidly declining over the satellite record, the Antarctic experienced a slight increase until 2015, followed by a sharp decline in 2016,” Kromer said, as reported by Penn State. “In 2022, we witnessed a new record low, and this year’s levels are even lower, significantly below previous observations. These recent rapid changes in Antarctic sea ice highlight the urgency of understanding their causes and their potential impact on the Antarctic ice sheet.”

The researchers said the findings draw attention to the need to refine current climate models in order to improve the accuracy of their predictions.

“If we aim to project future sea level changes with precision, it’s essential to enhance our models, particularly in representing sea ice dynamics,” Trusel said, as Penn State reported.

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In Canada’s vast boreal forest — the northern expanse of spruce, fir, pine, and tamarack trees that stretches across nearly the entire country — fire is endemic. It helps the ecosystem stay healthy. Some kinds of trees there can’t release their seeds unless exposed to high heat.

Fire becomes a problem, however, when there’s a major city in its path.

On May 3, 2016, the far northern city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, was overtaken by a massive conflagration that would become the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. Known among locals as “the Beast,” the Fort McMurray fire tore through the city at a shocking rate, with 300-foot-high, 1,000-degree-Fahrenheit flames that could devour an entire house in five minutes flat.

“Firefighters were not looking at houses to be saved, but as units of time to measure the fire by,” said John Vaillant, a journalist and author of the book Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World. The firefighters would see one home burning and go four houses down, sacrificing the three in the middle so that they might have 20 minutes to douse the fourth in water — not necessarily sparing it, but at least slowing the fire’s progression.

This was not normal fire behavior. As Vaillant writes, the Fort McMurray fire was a climate disaster supercharged by extraordinary conditions, including Death Valley-like dryness and spring temperatures that soared into the 90s.

Fire Weather describes in harrowing detail how the Fort McMurray fire violently disrupted the status quo for the city’s 100,000 inhabitants, 90 percent of whom evacuated the city in a chaotic, last-minute scramble, in some cases with flames lapping at the wheels of their overheated cars. That no one died was “borderline miraculous,” Vaillant said. 

The book, however, is not just a chronology of the Fort McMurray fire. Vaillant digs into the dark irony that a fossil fuel boomtown — Fort McMurray is one of Canada’s most important oil hubs — could be both contributing to and endangered by ever more ferocious wildfires. He also argues that residents’ struggle to process and respond to the Beast’s advancing flames is a “microcosm” of humanity’s sluggish reaction to climate change. One woman Vaillant interviewed, for example, insisted on dropping off her dry cleaning even as she saw the blaze approaching city limits.

Now, after a summer that brought Canada its worst fire season in recorded history and razed the Hawaiian city of Lahaina, Vaillant says it’s time for policymakers to do two things: better prepare for what he calls “21st-century wildfires,” the kinds of megafires that are only expected to become more commonplace as climate change progresses, and decarbonize — to prevent the fires from getting even worse. 

“Metaphorically speaking,” Vaillant said, “it’s May 3 for all of us now. The fire is coming into our towns, and everybody is feeling the impacts of climate change wherever they live.”

Fire Weather is one of five finalists for the 2023 National Book Award for nonfiction; the winner will be announced next Wednesday. Grist spoke with Vaillant about his book, fire season, and humans’ persistent resistance to change — whether adapting to worsening climate disasters or challenging the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q.Tell me more about “fire weather” conditions — especially in the Canadian boreal forest. What is it about this landscape in particular that makes it so fire-prone?

A.Fire is natural in the world and has always been part of the boreal landscape. But what we’ve done by burning fossil fuels relentlessly for the past 250 years is basically supercharge the heat-retaining characteristics of the atmosphere. We’ve made these forests hotter and drier. So what we have now in Fort McMurray in May and June and July are conditions that used to be normal in Southern California — temperatures in the 90s, relative humidity down around 10 or 12 percent. That’s Death Valley dry, and it manifests as a measurable difference in fire behavior. And so now, instead of a raging wildfire that will burn itself out, you have a firestorm that generates these gigantic fire clouds called pyrocumulonimbus that are essentially stratosphere-puncturing, somewhat hurricane-like firestorms that move across the landscape. We’ve created the conditions for fire to be more rapacious, to burn more intensely and more broadly across the globe.

The radiant heat coming off the wildfire that came into Fort McMurray on May 3 was 1,000 degrees — it was hotter than Venus. Modern houses turned into gas bombs and burnt into the basement in five minutes. Firefighters have no means to fight that — what used to be a firefighting operation back in the ‘80s now is simply a life-saving operation because the fire is simply too ferocious to fight with normal means. All the firefighters can do is try to gather civilians as quickly as possible and get them out of the area.

Q.Even as the fire closed in on Fort McMurray, residents were dropping off dry cleaning, locking their doors, closing garages — can you talk about the cognitive dissonance that made people want to continue tending to their lives?

A.None of us is really ready, imaginatively, for disaster. In the case of a wildfire, I think people’s psyches and intellects are simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the flames — it’s so big and it’s so alien that you actually don’t know how to respond. And I think the default response for many people is to try to maintain their status quo. 

In the case of one woman, Shandra Linder, she was just confronted with this disastrous fire — but she also had plans for that day. She had her Tuesday all planned out, and that included dropping off her dry cleaning. And so what you saw there was that gear-grinding moment when the trajectory of her day is interrupted by the immovable force and overwhelming energy of a disaster. This, in microcosm, is the difficulty that we’re having processing and responding to the implications and hazards of climate change. We’re having disasters and large fires on a regular basis, storms are more intense, the floods are worse. We’ve all read the articles and heard the stories, but we haven’t integrated it in a meaningful way. We’re still trying to drop off our dry cleaning. We’re still trying to lock our front door before we go out for the day. 

Q.You also write about the irony of a fossil fuel boomtown grinding to a halt because of a wildfire driven by climate change. Can you talk a little bit about that?

A.Fort McMurray is the largest single producer of petroleum in Canada, which itself is one of the world’s largest petroleum producers. It struck me that this petroleum boomtown, with nearly 100,000 people living and working in it, would be overwhelmed by a fire that was energized by climate change. There’s this terrible irony here. We’re in this vicious cycle — this energy that’s so useful to us, that has become our status quo, is actually turning on us and making that status quo much more difficult and dangerous to maintain.

How do we break that cycle? There are certainly people in Alberta who are keenly aware of the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change. But there are also many people in Alberta and around the world who make their living in ways that are totally dependent on fossil fuels. In Alberta, the premier is an avowed climate denier and is going to do nothing to encourage a transition to renewable energy — she has actually imposed a moratorium on wind and solar installations, even as her province suffered the worst fires in its history this year and with many catastrophic fires in its recent past. They are just charging ahead, wanting to expand the development of the tar sands. It’s a feedback loop of destruction that’s eventually going to make the industry collapse.

Q.Are there any fire management or prevention lessons that you think have been learned from Fort McMurray, or that could be learned? 

A.There’s a program in Canada called FireSmart that teaches how to look at your property, look at your neighborhoods, look at your community through the lens of flammability, and prepare yourself accordingly. All across California and Arizona and other flammable places, communities are figuring out how to protect their yards and porches against embers, which is the most common way houses burn. So there’s lots of local stuff you can do that doesn’t cost a lot to reduce the possibility of fire. 

The other piece of this is preemptive evacuation, rather than waiting until the fire’s in your city, which is what they did in Fort McMurray. It’s becoming more common in Canada. In fact, it’s one reason we have had no civilian fatalities [this year], despite rampant fire for months and months.

So there are definitely things we can do to mitigate this, but the big-picture solution is to decarbonize. It’s really clear now what the ailment is and what the solution is.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Canada’s most expensive disaster ever teaches us about climate change on Nov 10, 2023.

New Delhi’s environment minister Gopal Rai met with the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Wednesday to talk about the possibility of cloud seeding to induce rain in the capital city, which has been plagued by dangerous smog, reported Business Today.

Pending approval of IIT Kanpur’s proposal from the Supreme Court, the cloud seeding may be implemented on November 20 and 21, when a likelihood of cloud cover has been forecast.

“A delegation from CII & IIT, Kanpur met today to discuss the possibility of Cloud Seeding- Artificial rain in the Capital, for mitigating the [prevalent] air pollution. Enquired about the effectiveness of the technology and asked them to submit a concrete proposal,” Vinai Kumar Saxena, Delhi’s lieutenant governor, posted on social media.

Smog has been thick in Delhi for more than a week, forcing school closures and sending residents to the hospital with breathing issues.

“The density of population in New Delhi is tremendous, alarming, and you will not find greenery in many areas. The pollution level is of greatest danger here,” writer and Delhi resident Subhadip Majumdar told EcoWatch. “One has to walk through streets with masks like Covid days, and many people have trouble breathing. In autumn when the festival season starts, especially during Diwali or Festival of Lights, people burn fire crackers which contributes to the smog. The Delhi government has taken steps not to allow more than one car per family to drive on the roads and recently they have banned many old car models.”

As winter approaches each year, pollution from agricultural “stubble burning,” vehicles and industry gets trapped in the colder air, Reuters reported. Stubble burning is permitted for farmers to clear crop stubble following the rice harvest before planting their winter wheat crops.

“Sadly, every year when November rolls around there [is] a sense of dread as the air turns foul,” said Delhi resident Prachi Bhuchar, as reported by CNN. “We have been in Delhi for over 15 years now, but each year makes it tougher to stay on because it is a living hell.”

If the moisture content of the clouds predicted for November 20 is high enough, a mixture of salts will be used to trigger rainfall, according to Manindra Agrawal, an IIT Kanpur scientist and leader of the trial, Reuters reported.

The estimated cost of the project, which would cover 38.6 square miles, is $120,000.

“We don’t expect that big a cloud that will cover entire Delhi, but a few hundred kilometres would be good,” Agrawal told Reuters.

The city of 20 million will need widespread, heavy rain in order to clear out the pollutants, but light rain could actually make the situation worse, said Gufran Beig, founder and director of SAFAR, the monitoring agency of the federal government.

Other countries like China, Mexico, the U.S. and Indonesia have used cloud seeding to produce rain for crops affected by drought and to improve air quality.

But a plan to use the process to increase snowfall in New Mexico in 2021 was halted following allegations that it could be hazardous for residents and the environment.

The post New Delhi Considers Cloud Seeding to Combat Smog appeared first on EcoWatch.

Homes built in areas with grasslands and shrublands face a greater risk of fire as development expands and the effects of climate change intensify, however, a new report published Thursday finds that the number of homes inside widening wildfire perimeters have doubled since the 1990s. 

According to researchers, of the 55,000 homes that burned between 2010 and 2022, two-thirds burned in grassland and shrubland fires. But according to Volker Radeloff, professor of forest life and ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the paper, while climate change and drought play a major role, the expansion of housing developments on the outskirts of urban areas driving risk: between 1990 and 2020, nearly 44-million homes were built in these wildland-urban interface areas.

To complicate matters, Radeloff says that in areas where homes have burned, new development becomes susceptible to repeat fires. Grassland systems can catch fire every few years which means that rebuilding homes in the same way as the ones before with no change to vegetation or fire prevention methods means that wildfires can strike again.

“These are really great places to live and it’s good that people want to be close to nature,” said Radeloff. “We just need to figure out, as a group effort, how to do this in a world that’s warming and where we will probably see more fires in the future.”

The study says that one way to reduce wildfire risk may be through controlled burns, an Indigenous practice the authors cite as an important practice in fire prevention. “Indigenous burning is really important and it’s a great way to do it in a controlled fashion so there is less fuel in the landscape and if a wildfire occurs it is less intense,” said Radeloff. “But that has to happen frequently too and it’s not just like one time and you’re good for the next 50 years.”

Radeloff adds that the frequency needed to keep vegetation in check may not be possible due to how difficult it can be to implement controlled burns safely in wildland-urban interface areas, or areas where homes are mixed with undeveloped wildlife vegetation and prone to fire.

Radeloff said expanding development will continue to happen but there needs to be more responsibility on the homeowners, cities and federal government to make sure these fires do less damage.

“Typically when we think of wildfires, we see them in the news, we see dramatic big trees burning and so forth,” said Radeloff. “Those fires are really intense when they occur but they are not as widespread. Shrubland and grassland fires are much more widespread and that’s why they destroy far more homes.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Millions of homes are being built in fire-prone grasslands on Nov 9, 2023.

Often when we talk about the health implications of particular chemicals, the conversation tends to focus on the human impact, yet animals also suffer when harmful chemicals accumulate in their bodies and ecosystems. 

A new map highlights how pervasive the problem is for wildlife around the world by showcasing the scientific evidence linking so-called flame-retardant chemicals and poor health factors in dozens of different species. From fish to insects to large mammals, over 100 species from every continent are identified on the map, published by the Green Science Policy Institute, a nonprofit focused on the health impact of chemicals.

Flame retardant chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are found in an array of common household products and materials, like furniture, carpets, electronics and construction supplies. Many of the products they’re found in are legally required to have them in order to purportedly reduce flammability and slow the spread of fires. 

The substances can end up in our air, water or soil by burning or taking apart items that contain them or even just through their manufacturing process and normal use.

The repercussions for anyone living among such substances are insidious. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) notes that flame retardant chemicals can lead to “endocrine and thyroid disruption, immunotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, cancer and adverse effects on fetal and child development and neurobehavioral function.” Plus, these chemicals don’t break down easily, so flushing them out of an environment or an individual animal or person is out of the question.

Take the beluga whale, for example, an endangered species of whale found in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. In southeast Canada’s St. Lawrence estuary, many members of the endangered whale’s population “have suffered from cancer, likely due to pollutants including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and flame retardants,” according to GCPI’s map.

Across the world, the map highlights China’s Yangtze River Delta, where snakes and frogs, like the black spotted frog, living near e-waste recycling facilities were found to “have high levels of many flame retardants in their bodies, which can be transferred to their eggs.” That makes the bioaccumulation not only a health problem for the individual creature but for future generations, too.

But for Lydia Jahl, the project lead and the nonprofit’s science and policy manager, one of the most unexpected highlights of the map is the study showing high levels of flame retardants in endangered chimpanzees living in an Ugandan national park. 

“You wouldn’t think that animals similar to humans, especially, would have such flame retardant exposure in a national park,” notes Jahl. “That really stood out to me.”

While the NIEHS notes on their website that the use of flame-retardant chemicals “can offer benefits when added to certain products,” the Green Science Policy Institute says the benefits aren’t plentiful.

“It’s definitely possible that certain uses… might help prevent fires, like with faulty electronics,” says Jahl, who notes, “We’re not saying that there’s never any benefit but rather that many benefits… have been overblown and because there’s an associated health harm due to the use of these chemicals, we want to be really critical of where flame retardants are used.”

GSPI’s map — primarily compiled by GCPI intern Maddie Dolan — doesn’t highlight every species that has been studied for flame retardant chemical health impacts — only a fraction of the published, peer-reviewed studies out there were included — but not many species have been studied, the organization notes. 

Part of that is because the natural biodiversity of our planet makes it hard to access and study more creatures, Jahl explains. But there’s also the matter of funding. 

“There’s just simply not enough funding in environmental science in general for scientists to be able to do that breadth of work, it’s difficult work and it’s expensive work,” she says. “We also see that it’s mainly researchers from advantaged institutions that have the financial capability to conduct this research, so there’s areas of the world where there’s definitely more blank spots on the map.”

“There’s definitely an equity issue,” she adds.

The post Global Wildlife Harmed by Flame-Retardant Chemicals, New Map Shows appeared first on EcoWatch.

King Arthur Baking Company, a Vermont-based flour and baking goods company, has produced a new whole wheat flour using regenerative agriculture. The product, called Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend, is made up of a variety of wheat crops.

According to the company, their Climate Blend offers a more sustainable flour that will perform nearly the same as conventional whole wheat flour in baking recipes, although it may not be as consistent each year. That’s because the varieties used to create the whole wheat blend may change, based on yields that can be impacted by climate change, Fast Company reported.

The product was developed in partnership with Washington State University’s Breadlab, a team of researchers working on growing and breeding more sustainable wheat varieties and encouraging people to eat whole grains, rather than wasting edible parts of the plant.

“We’ve been partnering with King Arthur since 2009, working towards a shared vision of leading the industry in moving agriculture forward through innovative wheat growing,” Stephen Jones, director of Breadlab, said in a press release. “We’re proud to be a part of King Arthur’s journey to source 100% regeneratively grown wheat, and we’re excited to bring consumers along on this journey with the launch of Climate Blend.”

The first batch of Climate Blend flour uses wheat varieties grown on the Bock Family Farm in North Dakota and Linker Farms in Montana. 

“For those of us who are actively farming regenerative crops, it’s validating to see consumers care as much as we do how their food is grown,” said Brock Linker, operator of Linker Farms. “This entire movement I’ve found myself a small part of is so exciting and motivating.”

With regenerative agriculture, farmers aim to improve soil and crop health through minimal disturbance. This way of farming is not new — Indigenous communities have farmed with regenerative practices throughout history.

According to King Arthur Baking Company, its approach to regenerative agriculture is to work with farmers who will improve soil health, increase biodiversity, boost nutrient density of crops and sequester carbon through actions such as limiting tilling, planting cover crops, rotating crops and minimizing inputs (like fertilizer) added to crops.

For instance, this initial batch includes a perennial grain that can regrow naturally, rather than needing to be replanted, Fast Company reported.

“These roots will go further down than the annual wheats… they’ll mine different nutrients from the soil and bring them up and make them more available,” Jones told Fast Company. 

The company plans to source all of its flours from wheat grown with regenerative practices by 2030.

The new Climate Blend flour is certified by Regenified, a third-party organization, and is also Non-GMO Project Verified.

Consumers interested in purchasing the Regeneratively-Grown Climate Blend can find it on the King Arthur Baking Company website or at Whole Foods Market around the U.S. The cost of the flour is currently $5.95 for 32 ounces on the company website.

“I wish all farmers knew how rewarding it is to ‘farm with our eyes wide open,’” said Brandon Bock, operator of Bock Farms. “Originally, I farmed to grow as much yield as possible with the sole desire to make money for my family. Now, my main priority is to take care of our soil, our community, and human health.”

The post Vermont Baking Company Develops Regeneratively Grown Whole Wheat Flour appeared first on EcoWatch.