PBS NewsHour Presents “Tipping Point: Agriculture on the Brink”

Arlington, VA (May 19, 2023)—PBS NewsHour’s special, “Tipping Point: Agriculture on the Brink,” will be live-streamed from the historic quad at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Wednesday, May 24^th at 7:00 p.m. ET online and on NewsHour’s social platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Audience questions can be submitted online prior to and during the live program.

The 90-minute live event will explore the connections between climate change and the agriculture industry, the economic stressors facing farmers, the case for ecosystem stewardship as a path to more sustainable farming, and the challenges of feeding the world going forward.

It will also delve into possible solutions, biotech approaches to make farming more climate-resilient; the role remote sensing, data analysis, modeling, and artificial intelligence can play in planting smarter; crop diversification as a strategy for making agriculture carbon negative; erosion and water quality issues that can be addressed by relatively simple techniques like no-till planting and cover cropping; and the role the federal government could play in creating incentives for change in the 2023 Farm Bill.

The webcast will be hosted by PBS NewsHour science correspondent and Tipping Point executive producer, Miles O’Brien. The special includes live and recorded conversations with several guests including U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow; Cynthia Rosenzweig, senior researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Andrew Margenot, assistant professor of crop science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Michael Ganschow, a sixth-generation farmer from Walnut, Illinois, among others.

The “Tipping Point” series is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and John F Swift.

Press Contact: Ella Richardson, erichardson (at) newshour (dot) org