Industry Tackles Climate Change: Focus on Agriculture

Shifting weather and the resulting impacts on schedules and business continuity caused by climate change is a universal challenge spanning the globe and across industries. Whether it is drought or intermittent flooding causing field testing delays or more catastrophic events like wildfires and storms knocking out manufacturing, climate change’s ever-evolving impacts have become a part of our daily lives. As an integral part of the scientific and engineering communities, Waterborne experts are considering how our innovative solutions can contribute to the climate change challenges across the globe. We want to focus the start of our new series, “Working Through Climate Change,” right where our food supply starts – on the farm.

Recent EPA data estimates that the US agricultural industry accounts for approximately 11% of national greenhouse gas emissions. On a global scale, agriculture combined with forestry and other land use practices accounts for approximately 24% of emissions. While contributing a quarter of the world’s emissions seems high, the challenges for the agricultural industry are unique since we must still consider a food supply for a growing global population. The industry as a whole is taking massive initiatives and setting steep goals to reduce the impact of agriculture on climate change while also preparing all elements of the supply chain for future impacts. Many industry leaders have followed suit with the Paris Agreement by pledging to reduce emissions and focus on grower-friendly solutions to decarbonize agriculture.

With the knowledge that climate change could impact future activities and, in relation, our food supply and environment, many important management practices are being suggested and, in many cases, implemented at the farm level. Two examples are...

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Toxicologists Proving Up to the Challenge of Reducing Animal Testing

Animal testing, long a mainstay response to the requirement for a standard set of laboratory studies for each active chemical and formulated product in chemical regulation, has been on the out as the world of toxicology and regulatory science has tasked New-Approach Methodologies, or NAMs, with sourcing scientifically-robust alternatives. While the guidelines and requirements depend on the type of chemical, product, and regulatory agency, animal testing had remained a laboratory staple because similar types of toxicological endpoints could be derived using representative species from various taxonomic groups: aquatic and terrestrial plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates.

However, recent European requirements under OECD and ECHA have been pushing for vertebrate animal testing as a last resort for informing risk. The US has followed suit by the EPA calling for NAMs to reduce or replace the use of vertebrate animal testing to the degree practical and scientifically justifiable.

Today, it seems as though the field of toxicology is changing before our eyes based on these NAMs. Toxicologists and data scientists are developing some amazing alternatives to animal testing! Receptor-based laboratory assays...

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From Farm Tours to Ball Games, Waterborne at ACS Fall 2023

The American Chemical Society's ACS FALL 2023, Harnessing the Power of Data event in San Francisco, CA ended this past week and Waterborne Environmental, Inc.'s team of scientists, including Zack Stone, Andy Jacobson, and Nick Guth (shown), enjoyed presenting our papers, meeting with colleagues, and learning what's new in our industry. In addition to their time at the event, they participated in several ACS field trips. We asked them about their experience in California. Snippets from their replies are below:... >> Read their full story

Andy: "Nick and I joined the farm tour. We learned a lot about the specialty crops grown in California and some of the unique challenges growers face related to water/irrigation, labor, and regulation on important crop protection products for pests, weeds, and fungi. We also visited various research farms and facilities of UC-Davis, including the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science and the National Clonal Germplasm Repository which is operated with the USDA and is dedicated to Mediterranean fruit and nut crop species. The repository had plums and figs for tasting and I captured this picture of some of the grapes on vine. My favorite part of the tour was tasting wine from the region at Turkovich Family Wines and toasting to the AGRO division’s 50^th anniversary and the end of a very long week."

Zack: "While there wasn't a ton of information on AI at the conference, I did have some multiple discussions with people after my presentation about machine learning. We had some interesting conversations about the roles of machine learning vs mechanistic modeling, and how machine learning could be leveraged to improve mechanistic models. I think a common theme (not restricted to this year), is constantly trying to improve modeling; whether it’s through adding or tweaking modules in existing models, or taking novel approaches with spatially explicit modeling. I tried to jump around a bit more and catch some talks on sustainability and climate change as well. EPAs presentation on climate change was about 75% the same as last years, so progress there is pretty slow. There wasn’t a whole lot of on-field sustainability other than BMP, but attention was drawn to sustainability from a larger scope, through the whole life-cycle."

Read Waterborne's ACS Fall 2023 Abstracts

Waterborne Environmental is a renowned consulting firm that has provided innovative solutions to the world’s most complex environmental problems since 1993. Our experienced, unbiased scientists and engineers work across industries to evaluate environmental, ecological, and human risks. Our work spans across industry and regulatory agencies to support the balance in the needs of a growing population with the environmental impact on our valuable natural resources.

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