Hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers could help feed a growing global population while restoring nature, yet they remain among the least-supported food producers. Whole Earth Farming says the Global South’s roughly 475 million smallholder farms already produce about 30% of the world’s food, despite limited access to finance, markets and training. Author Hugh Locke argues that helping half of these farming families adopt regenerative agriculture and agroforestry could produce the additional food needed through 2050 while improving soils, biodiversity and ecosystems.

A new state-of-the-art smart agriculture research centre will drive pioneering research and education with a focus on smart farming and sustainable food production.

Against the backdrop of global food security facing the dual pressures of population growth and climate warming, the search for green, low-cost agricultural yield-enhancing technologies has become increasingly urgent. As a frontier technology in agricultural physical engineering, high-voltage electrostatic field (HVEF) has attracted considerable attention for its potential to regulate plant growth and development in a non-chemical manner.

As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon, new research highlights the urgent need to better protect the region’s remaining forests from disturbances.

While measures to avoid deforestation or restore cleared land dominate many conservation strategies, approaches to protect existing forests from disturbances, including selective logging and wildfires, can often provide the biggest “bang for your buck”, a new study, published today in Science shows.

The findings are from an international team of researchers from the UK, Brazil, Sweden and Australia, led by scientists at Lancaster University. The group undertook the first systematic comparison study of its kind by contrasting different ways to either protect existing forests or restore them on agricultural land.

New Jersey Institute of Technology hosted the International Conference on Nanobubbles on August 19–21, bringing together scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and industry partners.

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers generated the first chromosome-scale reference genome for the rice stink bug, Oebalus pugnax, identifying more than 13,000 genes with broad biological and agricultural relevance. The development created a foundational resource to help scientists better understand how the insect feeds, adapts to host plants and potentially develops resistance to insecticides. The study was published in the Journal of Heredity and provides the most detailed genomic analysis to date of the rice stink bug, which feeds on more than 15 host plant species, including grain sorghum, and has shown resistance to pyrethroid insecticides in some populations.

Essential oil from underused Hinoki (Japanese cypress) roots may help improve sleep quality, according to a pilot study of middle-aged women. In a home-based crossover study, participants showed fewer nighttime awakenings, improved morning feelings, and brain-wave patterns suggesting smoother sleep onset. The findings also point to potential higher-value uses of forestry residues in aroma-based relaxation products.

A study of Scots pine plantations across Mediterranean Spain, temperate Romania and Northeast China found that climate constraints on growth vary by region. Soil moisture was the main limitation in dry Spanish sites, while temperature played a larger role in Romania and Northeast China. Spanish plantations showed sharper drought-related growth declines but stronger average recovery, although many did not recover within four years. The findings support region-specific forest management and improved models incorporating long-term drought, regional climate dynamics and local adaptation.

A new study in Forest Ecosystems tracked a 300-year temperate forest succession and found that particulate organic carbon (POC) declined at all depths, while mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) increased by 55% in surface soils but declined deeper down. These patterns were linked to shifts in microbial life-history strategies: surface MAOC accumulation associated with extracellular processing, while deeper carbon dynamics tied to microbial growth and declining necromass under resource scarcity. The findings suggest that forest age alone cannot predict carbon storage, soil depth and microbial mechanisms matter.