Manure, phosphorus, and water

Manure is an excellent source of fertilizer for the soil, but nutrients that it contains — like phosphorus — can contaminate water if they’re not applied and managed properly. Farmers have to follow a lot of rules when it comes to managing nutrients from fertilizers, such as manure on their farms. That diligence includes picking the right location for constructing new farm buildings away from neighbours, water, and wetlands. It’s also important to have enough storage space to store manure safely over the winter months; manure shouldn’t be spread when the ground is frozen, because it’s more likely to be washed away by rain and melting snow, instead of going into the soil.

Banking on seeds

To ensure that future generations of people will still have enough to eat, even if the climate continues to change, the Global Seed Vault was established on a remote island in northern Norway. The vault is home to more than 1.1 million samples of food crop seeds from almost every country in the world, so that plant life can be preserved through crises like war and climate change72. It’s a bit like storing your photos in the cloud, or on a backup hard drive, so you’ll still have them if you lose your phone!