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URBANA, Ill. ­– The United States has experienced a dramatic increase in anti-democratic extremist groups in recent decades, culminating with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Adverse economic conditions and high unemployment rates fueled the proliferation of extremism, according to a study from University of Illinois. 

URBANA, Ill.  – The number of people fleeing violence, poverty and conflict is skyrocketing worldwide and refugees often become permanently displaced. Syria’s decade-long civil war has caused millions of people to flee the country, with many settling in neighboring Lebanon. 

Governments and humanitarian organizations provide aid to the refugees, but contributions from donor countries have failed to meet rising needs in recent years. That makes it even more important to know where aid can be most effective.

URBANA, Ill. – Women’s ability to work as entrepreneurs can help alleviate poverty and malnutrition in developing countries. As local governments and development organizations aim to encourage business opportunities, it’s important to identify projects suited for women’s lives in rural households.

URBANA, Ill. – With threats of water scarcity complicating the need to feed a growing global population, it is more important than ever to get crop irrigation right. Overwatering can deplete local water supplies and lead to polluted runoff, while underwatering can lead to sub-optimal crop performance. Yet few farmers use science-based tools to help them decide when and how much to water their crops.

URBANA, Ill. -- New studies from the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) shed more light on the economic and environmental costs of mandates in the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), a federal program to expand the nation’s biofuels sector.

Illinois is undergoing a rapid change in weather patterns that already has started to transform the state and could affect the future of farming, a major new scientific assessment by The Nature Conservancy in Illinois reveals.

URBANA, Ill. –The Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) at the University of Illinois has partnered with Argentinian company Rizobacter to bring soybean technology to 26 African countries. This unique public-private partnership provides the SIL Pan-African Soybean Variety Trial (PAT) network with access to a cutting-edge inoculant product, Rizoliq TOP, for use in the Africa-wide PAT platform.

URBANA, Ill. – Agricultural producers deal firsthand with changing weather conditions, and extreme events such as drought or flooding can impact their productivity and profit. Climate change models project such events will occur more often in the future. But studies of the economic consequences of weather and climate on agriculture typically focus on local impacts only.

URBANA, Ill. ­– Food waste and obesity are major problems in developed countries. They are both caused by an overabundance of food, but strategies to reduce one can inadvertently increase the other. A broader perspective can help identify ways to limit food waste while also promoting healthy nutrition, two University of Illinois researchers suggest.

URBANA, Ill. ­– If your day started with a cup of coffee, there’s a good chance your morning brew came from Colombia. Home to some of the finest Arabica beans, the country is the world’s third largest coffee producer. Climate change poses new challenges to coffee production in Colombia, as it does to agricultural production anywhere in the world, but a new University of Illinois study shows effects vary widely depending on where the coffee beans grow.