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Myth #1: Today’s farms are less sustainable than they used to be.

Fact: Simply put, farmers today are doing more with less. Here are a few examples:

As farms become more productive, grasslands, forests, and wildlife are returning. Globally, the rate of reforestation is catching up to a slowing rate of deforestation.19

Humankind’s use of wood has peaked and could soon decline significantly.20 And humankind’s use of land for agriculture is likely near its peak and capable of declining soon.21 All of this is wonderful news for everyone who cares about achieving universal prosperity and environmental protection.

Farm subsidies act like regressive taxes. They help high-income corporations, not poor rural farmers. Most of the money goes toward large agribusinesses.

Between 1995 and 2020, the top 10% of recipients received 78% of the $240.5 billion doled out, according to EWG. The top 1% received 26% of the payments. That averages out to $1.7 million per company.2

Ultimately, Congress should end all farm subsidies. Businesses in other industries face many risks and market fluctuations, yet they prosper or fail depending on their own skill and planning without a federal subsidy cushion. Farm businesses face some unique risks, but so do other businesses. Consider, for example, the fast pace of change in technology industries, or the large price fluctuations in the mining and energy industries.

The following sections discuss why farm subsidies make little sense.

Government payments to agriculture are expected to decrease to $10.3 billion this year, down from $16 billion in 2022 and even higher levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. These projections are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS). Farm income subsidies in 2023 are expected to fall to $6 billion, with an additional $4 billion directed to farm businesses participating in agricultural conservation programs.

*Graph omitted

A Yang-type UBI would cost “something like 50 percent to 100 percent of the entire federal budget,” says Robert Greenstein, founder and president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that analyzes budgetary issues affecting low- and moderate-income Americans.

EWG’s analysis of records from the Department of Agriculture finds that subsidy payments to farmers ballooned from just over $4 billion in 2017 to more than $20 billion in 2020 – driven largely by ad hoc programs meant to offset the effects of President Trump’s failed trade war.

Not only did the amount of subsidies skyrocket, but the richest farms also increased their share: In 2016, about 17 percent of total subsidies went to the top 1 percent of farms and about 60 percent to the top 10th. In 2019, the richest 1 percent received almost one-fourth of the total, and the top 10th received almost two-thirds.1

Researchers have studied fossil records from the Late Triassic mass extinction, which happened around 201.3 million years ago, and found that marine life did not fundamentally change, even though the vast proportion of species were killed off.

The international team of researchers says that while marine species were still badly affected by the event, enough life survived underwater to keep the ecosystems functioning. The findings could help us understand more about how the changing climate of today could affect the planet.

As India recovers from a blackout that left the world’s second-largest country — and more than 600 million residents — in the dark, a ripple of uncertainty moved through the Federal Regulatory Commission’s command center today in the U.S. The Indian crisis had some people asking about the vulnerability of America’s grid.

“What people really want to know today is, can something like India happen here? So if there is an outage or some problem in the Northeast, can it actually spread all the way to California,” John Wellinghoff, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News. “It’s very, very unlikely that ultimately would happen.”

The idea of the nation's power grids becoming the next battleground for cyber warriors could make hacking into consumers’ credit card accounts and personal information seem like child’s play. While U.S. power companies are likely targeted by foreign governments and others in increasingly sophisticated breaches, actually shutting off the lights and causing chaos is far more complicated than many pundits make it seem. Dan Scali, senior manager of industrial control systems at Mandiant, a cybersecurity consulting arm of FireEye (), explained that while cyber criminals may gain access to power and utility data systems, it doesn’t necessarily mean the result will be a power outage and a total takedown of power grid control systems. In other words, the power grid is controlled by more than just a panel of digital buttons. “Losing the control system is bad from the perspective that it takes you out of your normal mode of operations of being able to control everything from one command center, but it doesn’t mean you’ve lost control or all the lights go out [in the city],” Scali explained. While many of the systems have been modernized to include digitized control panels, if a hacker were to infiltrate the system, a utility worker could still have the ability to manually control the machines by flipping a switch, pushing a button, or tripping a breaker. As the world saw with the recent attack in Ukraine, which caused a blackout for 80,000 customers of the nation’s western utility, the biggest problem may be ensuring the power grid’s control systems are not vulnerable to cyber break ins. The January attack in Ukraine was likely caused by a corrupted Microsoft Word attachment that allowed remote control over the computer, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Scali said there was no evidence from the incident in Ukraine that the hacker’s malware was able to physically shut down the power. “It wiped out machines, deleted all the files. Kill disk malware made it impossible to remotely control things. It caused chaos on the business network, and the area where control system operations sat. But the attacker, we believe, would have had to actually used the control system to cause load shedding, which caused the power to go out, or trip breakers to cause the actual problem. Malware itself didn’t turn the power out,” Scali said. He said what most likely happened in that incident was the hacker stole user credentials and logged into the system remotely. The bottom line: Yes, a similar event could happen in the U.S. And corporate America is concerned. A recent survey released in January on the state of information security, conducted by consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, showed cybersecurity as one of the biggest concerns among the top brass at U.S. power and utilities firms. Part of the problem, Brad Bauch, security and cyber sector leader at PwC said, is the interconnectedness of the industry’s tools. “Utilities want to be able to get information out of [their] systems to more efficiently operate them, and also share that information with customers so they have more real-time information into their usage,” he explained. While allowing access to their own consumption data allows the companies to give their customers more of what they want, it also opens up a host of access points for hackers, making the systems more vulnerable than they otherwise would be. But to say that the power grid is susceptible to cyber hackers is a bit of an oversimplification.

There is significant risk, says the study, that commercial-sector suppliers will not be able to keep up with aggressive new manufacturing demands and will be challenged by: capacity constraints of their own (Tier-2 and Tier-3) suppliers that have under-invested in capability development; specialty raw-materials shortages (e.g., carbon fiber and titanium fasteners); and ongoing supply-chain delays and shortages resulting from the disaster in Japan.

"The aerospace supply chain was basically decimated by the economic downturn, as even sold orders were put on hold or otherwise put in a lumpy, stop-and-go mode," said David Wireman, director in AlixPartners' Aerospace and Defense Practice. "From all indications, that supply chain is not at all prepared for steep commercial ramp-up curve that lies ahead, and production constraints are a very real possibility." Defense Sector But while demand on the commercial-aircraft side looks strong, defense, globally, looks to be weakening. According to the study, U.S. defense spending is expected to decrease by at least 12.2% by 2013 and by 6.5% by 2016, while defense spending in Europe, already down 2.8% in 2010, is expected to continue to drop sharply in the coming years, led by the U.K.'s recent announcement of an 8% cut by 2015 and promised drops of up to 25% in smaller European nations.

According to our research report, “Aerospace Industry Forecast to 2013”, global aerospace industry has witnessed an impressive growth over the past few years, with civil aviation segment emerging as the major contributor. Increase in air traffic and considerable increase in military budget have provided the much required impetus to the industry. The US represents the biggest aerospace market and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 3.2% during 2011-2013.

The US is the leader of aerospace and aviation industry as it is both the largest producer and marketplace for the industry. As per our findings, civil aircrafts account for a major share in the US aerospace market. Civil aircraft sales were mainly driven by the sales of large commercial jetliners in the past. Moreover, the positive growth expected from the market for large jetliners is likely to boost the civil aerospace market in the coming years.

Many U.S. manufacturers are reversing the trend of outsourcing and bringing back their production and jobs from overseas. This is called reshoring, and it has many advantages for the U.S. economy and society, such as lower costs, higher quality, more resilience, less trade friction, and more customer satisfaction.

In this blog post, we will explain what reshoring is, why it is good for America, what obstacles it faces, and how Mead Metals is contributing to this positive change.

WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office Economic Policy released an analysis of the surge in construction spending for manufacturing in the United States. Since the end of 2021, and the passage of President Biden’s Invest in America Agenda – Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and CHIPS Act – real manufacturing construction spending has doubled. As Secretary Yellen has outlined, the Biden Administration is pursuing an economic approach based on “modern supply side economics” which seeks to expand the productive capacity of the American economy by investing in things like infrastructure, high-tech manufacturing, and workers.

The analysis, authored by Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Eric Van Nostrand, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Macroeconomics Tara Sinclair, and Special Assistant for Economic Policy Samarth Gupta looks to unpack the context behind the surge.

American manufacturing growth started outpacing the rest of the world's growth at the end of last year — for the first time in recent memory.

The big picture: The reasons for the surprising flip-flop are primarily energy and COVID-related, according to the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center.

science news service operated by AAAS, 7-11-2023, “Six research centers will lead innovation towards a fully sustainable energy sector,” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/995204, RS

An investment of £53 million in six research centres will drive forward change in the energy system and help to meet the UK’s net zero target by 2050.

The following industry leaders illustrate what sustainability initiatives look like:

• Rated one of the world’s most sustainable corporations (Corporate Knights Global 100) and a green champion for over two decades, Schneider Electric offers technology and energy solutions to help companies shrink their carbon footprints. Schneider has accelerated its own formidable climate commitments to generate 80% “green revenues” by 2025 and to help its customers avoid up to 800 million metric tons of emissions.

The most recently published scientific papers indicate that there is a growing interest in topics related to green investment. The first papers dealing with green investments were published in 1992, but their level only increased significantly in 2014 (Figure 1), by 71.43% (meaning 10 more studies in 2015), culminating in 2020, where the number of papers reached the highest level ever published (103 studies).

It is observed that, after 2008, the interest in the papers analyzing green investments increased, one of the reasons being the financial crisis of 2008 which generated enlarged interest in the green economy and its benefits [2].

The pace of deployment of some clean energy technologies – such as solar PV and electric vehicles – shows what can be achieved with sufficient ambition and policy action, but faster change is urgently needed across most components of the energy system to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, according to the IEA’s latest evaluation of global progress.

Published today, the annual update of the IEA’s Tracking Clean Energy Progress online resource reveals remarkable gains in the past year. Electric car sales reached a record high of more than 10 million in 2022, a nearly tenfold increase in just five years. Renewable electricity capacity additions rose to 340 gigawatts (GW), their largest ever deployment. As a result, renewables now account for 30% of global electricity generation. Investment in clean energy reached a record USD 1.6 trillion in 2022, an increase of almost 15% from 2021, demonstrating continued confidence in energy transitions even in an uncertain economic climate.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has sparked a widespread curiosity by many asset managers. The value of ESG-focused portfolios across major markets surpassed US$30 trillion in 2019. ESG investing is important to investors for a minimum of two reasons. For starters, by emphasising ESG investing, ethically responsible investment activities are strongly encouraged. Secondly, ESG investing is rapidly being thought of as a way to improve performance of a managed portfolio, thus improving returns while decreasing portfolio risk (Broadstock et al., 2021).

Investors are mostly drawn to organisations that have a high number of assets to invest in and it causes the stock market to rise in value. This idea is reinforced by Rahmandia (2013) and Zaki, et al. (2017), who claim that a company’s scale has a favourable impact on stock prices.