The Ogallala aquifer shrank twice as fast in the last six years as it did in the previous 60, largely from over-pumping on farms, reports The Associated Press. The aquifer — a key source of irrigation water for farms in eight states — lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage between 2013 and 2015, drying up streambeds, undermining fish species and threatening the farmers who rely on Ogallala for their crops.

Hybrid seeds are widely used by corn and rice farmers because they boost yields. Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia, one of the world's leading wheat-producing nations, say they have identified a naturally occurring gene in wheat that, when turned off, allows cross-pollination, essential for hybrids, while preventing self-pollination.

Canadian officials say prospects of agreement on a new NAFTA by the end of the year are fading in the face of unacceptable U.S. demands, reports Canadian Press, with some analysts questioning if the true U.S. goal is a breakdown in negotiations. The chief U.S. negotiator told Bloomberg, "We made a request of Canada for improved access for dairy, poultry and eggs" over the weekend, the first time agricultural trade was discussed at the talks.

Republican lawmakers and the chicken industry "are aggressively lobbying to speed up" inspection lines, now limited to 140 birds per minute, at poultry slaughter and processing plants, says NBC News. The trade group National Chicken Council has petitioned USDA to allow plants participating in a new inspection system to operate "at any line speed" they can handle.

With wildfires still blazing in Northern California and 222,000 acres already destroyed, vineyard workers are breathing particulate-filled air as they bring in the grape crop. Many of the workers are undocumented and can't afford to lose a paycheck even if their homes were destroyed in the fires that have consumed the region.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt says the agency will no longer settle lawsuits with environmental groups behind closed doors, arguing that the Obama administration regularly excluded industry and state governments from those conversations while pandering to green activists.

In conjunction with World Food Day, agricultural lender Rabobank announced a global program, "Kickstart Food," to encourage sustainable food production, beginning with a $1-billion "facility" for land restoration and forest protection. The facility was launched in partnership with the UN Environment Program.

For generations, members of the Yurok tribe have fished for salmon in the Klamath River in the northwestern corner of California. "Salmon is essential to Yurok ceremonies, for food and for income," says Lisa Morehouse in a story for The California Report that was produced in partnership with FERN. "But this fall, the number of chinook salmon swimming up the Klamath was the lowest on record, threatening the tribe's entire culture and way of life."

President Trump has nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, a current senior policy adviser at the free-market think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, to serve as the White House’s senior environmental policy adviser. Hartnett has argued that calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is “absurd,” and that C02 should instead be considered the gas of life.

Florida was on track for its first increase in orange production in five years until Hurricane Irma pounded the state last month with the crop nearly ready for harvest. USDA's Agricultural Statistics Board, in a rare statement, said the crop could have been 75.5 million boxes based on its survey work before the hurricane, instead of the 54 million boxes forecast afterward, the smallest crop since 1947.

Cooke Aquaculture — the company responsible for the estimated 105,000 farmed salmon that spilled out of a ripped net and into Puget Sound this summer — offered to pay the Lummi Nation an extra $12 per fish if the tribe would not push for the prohibition of net-pen aquaculture.

Following an explosion of complaints about crop damage by the weedkiller dicamba, the EPA strengthened its rules for spraying the herbicide onto genetically modified cotton and soybeans. The new guidelines require special training of applicators before they can spray dicamba, limit the time of day when it can be used and bar spraying when winds exceed 10 miles an hour, a reduction from the 15 mph limit this year.

The wildfires in northern California destroyed vegetable farms in Sonoma County, "including several that were founded in the past six years by young farmers taking part in the local organic farm movement," says the San Francisco Chronicle. Growers lost homes and farm buildings and say that getting back into production will be an uphill battle.

The only tropical rainforest in the United States is El Yunque National Forest, on the northeastern corner of Puerto Rico and one of the tourist attractions of the island. "Hurricane Maria was like a shock to the system...The whole forest is completely defoliated," Grizell Gonzalez of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry told the New York Times.

The USDA estimated a 21 percent drop in Florida orange production this season following damage from Hurricane Irma a month ago. State officials said losses were far worse and a farm group, Florida Citrus Mutual, said its survey of growers indicated losses exceeding 50 percent.

The one-two punch of Hurricane Harvey on Gulf coast and Hurricane Irma in the Southeast reduced the U.S. cotton crop by more than 600,000 bales, or 3 percent, said the USDA in its monthly crop report. The USDA lowered its estimate of the harvest in Texas, the No. 1 cotton state, and in No. 2 Georgia, down by 300,000 bales apiece.