What if farmers could not only prevent excess phosphorus from polluting downstream waterways, but also recycle that nutrient as a slow-release fertilizer, all without spending a lot of money? In a first-of-its-kind field study, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers show it’s possible and economical. 

Conventional food and agricultural production systems employ a linear “take, make, waste” approach: taking natural resources from the Earth to make food and fuel, generating waste that contaminates the soil and water, and emitting harmful pollutants.

Livestock production is an important component of U.S. agriculture, with global demand for meat and dairy expected to double in the coming decades. This increase will lead to intensified grazing on U.S. grasslands, potentially exacerbating water quality degradation from livestock waste runoff into waterways.

The new gift will support interdisciplinary collaboration across campus to create sustainable solutions to address the challenge of climate change.

As the world faces the challenges of mitigating climate change and providing resources for a growing population, there is increasing focus on developing circular economies for sustainable production. But to evaluate strategies and impacts, it is necessary to have reliable metrics.

Nanozymes are tiny, engineered substances that mimic the catalytic properties of natural enzymes, and they serve a variety of purposes in biomedicine,  chemical engineering, and environmental applications. They are typically made from inorganic materials, including metal-based elements, which makes them unsuitable for many purposes due to their toxicity and high production costs.

Researchers analyzed the financial and environmental costs and benefits of four biofuels crops used to produce sustainable aviation fuels in the U.S. They found that each feedstock — corn stover, energy sorghum, miscanthus or switchgrass — performed best in a specific region of the rainfed United States. Their study will help growers and policymakers select the feedstocks most suited to meeting goals like reducing production costs, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and building soil carbon stocks. 

Creating fertilizers from organic waste can help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and promote sustainable production. One way of doing this is through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), which converts biomass into biocrude oil through a high-temperature, high-pressure process.

Urban agriculture has the potential to improve food security through local, efficient, and sustainable food production. Examples of urban food systems include hydroponics, where plants grow in a nutrient solution without soil, and aquaponics, which combines hydroponics with raising fish in tanks.