Food security and agriculture

As the 2019-2020 megafires took hold across eastern Australia, many of us reeled at the sight of animals trying and often failing to flee. Our screens filled up with images of koalas with burned paws and possums in firefighter helmets.

The August 2023 Maui wildfires, the deadliest in the U.S. in over a century, devastated homes, tourism, and agriculture. Fires smoldered underground for weeks, destroying water systems, with some contamination still being studied.

While most attention surrounding El Niño focuses on drier conditions and water shortages, cascading effects impact food and energy production, air quality, human health and more.

As extreme weather intensifies, ranchers are driven by a need to adapt and a desire to preserve the land for future generations.

High-moisture fruit crops like bananas may become a firefighter’s strongest ally in places with a Mediterranean climate. New research shows that buffers of high-moisture crops in wildland-urban interfaces significantly slows the advance of wildfires.

What if plants grown on agricultural land could be harnessed to help mitigate fires? This study finds that many common crops and pastures are low in flammability and could be used to redesign agricultural landscapes against wildfires.

Here's how Canadian farmers are recovering from record wildfires - and steeling for future climate change impacts.

Francis Onabe still remembers the event of 22 March, 2020 vividly. That day, bush fire set by a farmer escalated and spread to his farmland, destroying all his crops in Olum, his community in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River State.