Go to the Arkansas Rice Festival in Wiener, Arkansas and you will discover how delicious – and diversely flavored – this cereal grain can be. Savory, sweet, or even spicy: Each dish at the festival’s annual rice recipe contest shows the many ways to prepare this international food staple.

Why look to Arkansas for rice? The state produces 4 million tons of it every year, which is nearly half the rice grown in the United States.  But that U.S. annual total is dwarfed by the amount produced by China, which at 207 million tons is the world’s largest rice producer.  It’s also natural that the world looks to China for rice; genomic mapping has suggested that cultivated rice was first grown in the Pearl River valley in southern China.

During the November COP27 climate talks in Egypt, Presidents Xi and Biden agreed to restart bilateral climate talks that would build on the clean energy and the green and climate-resilient agriculture priorities highlighted in the U.S.-China Climate Crisis Statement and the U.S.-China Glasgow Declaration. While details remain to be ironed out, the renewed dialogue could open up a new area of collaboration around greenhouse gas emissions from food production, targeting an oft-overlooked long-lived climate pollutant, nitrous oxide (N2O).  

Every year, more than two billion farmers around the world work the land day in and day out to earn a living and produce what is needed to feed and clothe an ever-growing global population that reached 8 billion in November 2022. Though they bear the brunt of climate change on the front lines, many of the world’s farmers, ranchers and fishers are unaware of the international processes that affect their livelihoods.

“The food system is complex; it is not just about food production,” said Florence Odiwuor, a Kenyan Southern Voices for Peacebuilding Scholar, at a recent event on the role of food security systems in sustainable peacebuilding in Africa hosted by the Wilson Center’s Africa Program. As a lecturer at the School of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environmental Studies at Rongo University, Odiwour observed that given the food system’s interconnectedness with issues like education, gender, finance, and labor, “disruptions or failures in the [food] system have caused a lot of conflict in [Kenya].”

The negative impacts on global food security wrought by Russia’s war in Ukraine are obvious. But recent news that Russia currently occupies more than one fifth of Ukrainian farmland, draws attention to another dimension of this politically-induced food and agricultural crisis: land itself. Of course, territory has long been an object of conflict and warfare. But agricultural land—in particular—is also a key, though understated, dimension of the geopolitical ambitions undergirding Russian activity at home and abroad.

When Russia struck a deal with Ukraine on July 15, there was hope that millions of tons of food would once again be able to flow from the embattled country. Under the agreement, brokered by Turkey and the UN, Russia would lift naval blockades and allow large-scale shipments of grain to leave Ukraine’s ports.                                                  

Biodegradable plastic mulch seems like a dream come true for organic farming. Its use eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides, conserves water, extends the growing season, and allows for the harvesting of clean fruits and vegetables. This mulch also lightens the load of farmers. Rather than assuming the expense and labor to gather up and haul plastic mulch to a landfill, farmers can till biodegradable mulch safely back into the soil. Yet these benefits will only be realized if biodegradable mulch films are 100 percent degradable by microbes in nature, and if they break down to carbon dioxide, water, and minerals without damaging the soil.