Pushed out by Trump, New Jersey ecologist launches bid for Congress | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Here's my open access paper "Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American agriculture?"! I show that using $1,000 sales value as the threshold to be considered a farmer in the Census of Agriculture + increasing the # of operators per farm results in vast overestimates of "farms" & "farmers" 1/

Kudos to Ben Iuliano, Adam Calo, Maywa Montenegro de Wit and Adam Calo from the Agroecology Research-Action Collective for ending the Enduring Fantasy of “Feeding the World” in Spectre spectrejournal.com/the-enduring...

What drives the enduring myth of “feeding the world?” @tabledebates.bsky.social

Really proud of this piece pushing back against renewed enthusiasm for “land sparing” (i.e. industrial ag boosterism), written with some brilliant colleagues. Check it out!

The solution proposed by generative AI boosters is to devote more and more class time to learning about their product, its uses, its limits (if any) — and less and less to the substance, the subject matter of the course. Solutions, problems — what’s the difference? None, as long as you’re using AI.

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

30 years on, GM crops encounter the Jevons paradox: initial efficiencies in pesticide use have led to massive increases in those pesticides: doi.org/10.1111/joac...

I will keep posting about this because I want people to know it continues, and it is a lot more than the individual cases we see in the news. >1000 students at 170+ universities across 43 states now. Thank you @insidehighered.com and @amowreader.com www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

📣 We are offering 2 PhD thesis projects @inrae-save.bsky.social with Gaëtane Le Provost, Brice Giffard & my self. 1/2# Impacts of land-use change on biodiversity and ecosystem services adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Last week, Trump's USDA announced plans to significantly increase slaughter line speeds at pork and poultry plants. The meat industry celebrated the news. It was hardly covered, but has enormous implications for hundreds of thousands of workers.

I wrote about the free speech advocates who spent the last decade pearl clutching about the campus left while (intentionally or unintentionally) manufacturing consent for the right-wing assault on free expression.

Columbia has expelled the president of @swcolumbia.bsky.social, a HELU member org, for participation in Palestine solidarity activism. This comes less than 24 hours before SWC's first bargaining session. We stand with SWC-UAW against this illegal interference in bargaining. uaw.org/in-shocking-...

more of this please

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

Where is this kind of response from our universities? @cuny.edu

I am begging the national media to start taking this seriously. Stop buying the claims that the framing of "temporary" or "pause." They are altering the review processes of federally funded scientific research from merit-based peer review processes to political screening by ideologues.

This is day one, and it's already exhausting. That's part of the gameplan, to make you so exhausted that you just give in. We as biologists need to fight this harmful nonsense. You don't need to have the energy every day, but when this comes up, our organizations must get into the fray.

when you have anti-DEI proponents openly going after black military officers for recruiting from HBCUs and suing schools for their black and Hispanic enrollment *even after the schools ended any racial preferences* then the only honest label for these people is "segregationist"

I’m teaching conservation bio & sustainable development for the first time in the spring - I’m super excited, but also feeling a little out of my depth/not up to date on all the literature. Anyone have any must-read articles or recommended resources as I refine the syllabus?

+1 I recommend Kropotkin, along with Lewontin and Levins so often to my students. The Dialectical Biologist is a great antidote to The Selfish Gene, and Lewontin’s Biology as Ideology should also be required reading.

Fly pollinators are even more vulnerable to rising global temperatures than bees. 🌍🐝🐞 Protecting all pollinators is essential for our ecosystems and food security." www.psu.edu/news/researc...

gonna be interesting to see how her pro-agribusiness bona fides square with Kennedy’s supposed FDA crackdown

Come join our department! 🌎 🧪 👩‍🔬 🦟 🪰🐛 We are hiring for a field crops entomologist. 60% research, 40% extension based in Ithaca. Be central to helping New York farmers comply with the Birds and the Bees Act. Applications due January 2, 2025. apps.hr.cornell.edu/recruiting/f...

Thinking back to when I was a college student the day after the 2016 election, I’ve been asking myself what I would do now that I’m at the front of the room. It turns out the answers is add a bunch of stuff about mutual aid and Kropotkin quotes to the serendipitously scheduled mutualism lecture.

Another chapter from my diss now published in @jappliedecology.bsky.social ! More seminatual habitat = more predation and more ladybugs 🐞

Thrilled to share this paper led by Elissa Olimpi just out in #LandscapeEcology. We show that, contrary to widespread perception, maintaining habitat around produce farms enhances bird biodiversity without compromising food safety. (a thread) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Job! Agricultural Biodiversity Specialist – Habitat and Bee Better Certified Planner. Full time, Remote, Xerces Society recruiting.paylocity.com/Recruiting/J...

Exclusive: A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post.

I really hope this is the last thing I have to publish about all this, but: I wrote for the Nation about Columbia’s suppression of speech about Palestine and its violation of the work we do in the classroom www.thenation.com/article/soci...

One thing I miss about twitter (and hope to find here) is all the cool papers! Here's one contribution, hot off the press: The closing chapter of my diss (and first single-author pub) takes a look at the political economy of landscape pest control doi.org/10.1007/s104...