For nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty – the highest in more than half a century – getting a meal on the table isn’t easy. One-in-seven now receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (better known as food stamps) but that barely covers the necessities, especially when assistance runs thin at the end of the [...]

The American Farm Bureau, with its six million “member families” and carefully cultivated grassroots image, talks a good game. In the pitched battle over US farm policy—with agribusiness giants on one side, and small family farmers, organic and local food advocates, and environmentalists on the other—the Farm Bureau positions itself as the voice of the [...]

Adrienne LeBeouf recognized the symptoms when they started. The burning and the urge to head to the bathroom signaled a urinary tract infection, a painful but everyday annoyance that afflicts up to 8 million U.S. women a year. LeBeouf, who is 29 and works as a medical assistant, headed to her doctor, assuming that a [...]

Here’s a deal few businesses would refuse: Buy an insurance policy to protect against losses – even falling prices — and the government will foot most of the bill. That’s how crop insurance works. The program doesn’t just help out farmers, however. The federal government also subsidizes the insurance companies that write the policies. If their losses grow too big, taxpayers [...]

In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn’t been in contact with plastic. When they compared urine samples before and after the diet, the scientists were stunned to see what a difference a few days could make: [...]

Nitrate contamination in groundwater from fertilizer and animal manure is severe and getting worse for hundreds of thousands of residents in California’s farming communities, according to a study released today by researchers at UC Davis. Nearly 10 percent of the 2.6 million people living in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley might be drinking [...]

Updated on March 23: The FDA on March 14 issued a statement in response to this report, saying it had reviewed its previously published adverse drug effect numbers on ractopamine. After excluding reports of ineffectiveness, meat abnormalities and fertility abnormalities, it said the number of animals with reports of adverse effects was 160,917. The story reflects [...]

Jerry Nivens lives in a trailer in Caballo, N.M., 165 miles south of Albuquerque. A bulky Texas transplant who chain-smokes American Spirits, Nivens cares as deeply for his mesquite-speckled patch of ground as any rural New Mexican. He enjoys driving into the mountains, where he used to while away afternoons panning for gold. He goes [...]