Grassfed beef generally produces more carbon than it sequesters, according to a report by Oxford University’s Food Climate Research Network. Proponents of grassfed beef have argued that ruminants like cows can have positive effects on rangeland if they’re encouraged to move across the landscape, rather than being left to overgraze a particular area. The  animals’ eating habits and the pressure from their hooves can encourage deeper root growth and thus greater carbon sequestration by grasses, explains Grist.

Seventy-five percent of honey samples taken from around the world contained traces of neonicotinoids — a class of insecticides harmful to honeybees, says a study published in the journal Science.

An Interior Department employee who says he was reassigned because he warned about the threats posed by climate change resigned in a letter that accuses Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of poor leadership, wasting taxpayer money, and ignoring clear evidence of the damage caused by global warming.

Officials in California and Oregon are calling on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division to release emergency funding after salmon fisheries were closed in both states.

With an eye toward the 2018 farm bill, congressional backers of regional food marketing efforts filed bills in the House and Senate that would expand local and direct sales of food, which were estimated at $8.7 billion in 2015.

Danielle Marvit, who could fairly be called the tomato maven of Pittsburgh, didn’t hesitate when asked to list her favorites among the dozens of tomato varieties sold as seedlings by Garden Dreams, an urban farm set between vacant Victorian-era houses in Wilkinsburg, Pa.

Jon Rowley, who “helped make and shape Seattle’s reputation as a food destination while earning his own reputation as a culinary evangelist nationwide,” has died at 74, said the Seattle Times. 

The EPA intends to repeal the Clean Power Plan — an Obama-era effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 — according to a document circulated within the agency’s Regulatory Screening Agency.

The Organic Farmers Association, a national membership organization advancing the interests of certified organic farmers, said that it named Mark Rokala, a lobbyist on agriculture issues, as its policy director and also elected a policy committee. This new leadership will facilitate the association's policy platform.

In a first for the dairy industry, the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has signed an agreement to eventually buy all of its milk from Vermont dairies that uphold rigorous standards for treatment and pay of employees. The standards, known as Milk with Dignity, were devised by the workers themselves and based on the Fair Food Program established by tomato workers in Florida under the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).

The United Farm Workers union, which represents nearly 10,000 workers, has proposed to pay $1.3 million in back wages, penalties, and legal fees to 24 former field organizers who sued the union in 2013, reports the Los Angeles Times. 

In a letter released Tuesday, the FDA instructed the Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord, Mass., that it needed to remove "love" from the list of ingredients for its granola, Bloomberg reports. “Your Nashoba Granola label lists ingredient ‘Love,’” the agency wrote in the letter, which was dated Sept. 22. “‘Love’ is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.”

With the start of the new fiscal year, the USDA will issue $8 billion in crop subsidy payments, triggered by persistently low commodity prices, to hundreds of thousands of farmers. The government also said it will pay $1.6 billion in annual rental payments to landowners who enrolled fragile land in the Conservation Reserve.

Lawmakers from the Plains and Midwest filed companion bills in the House and Senate to discourage farmers from converting native sod into cropland nationwide by closing a crop insurance loophole. The legislation would require a reduction of crop-insurance subsidies for four years before producers could qualify for them.

Planting thin strips of native grasses and flowers at the edges of cropland delivers a broad range of conservation benefits— from reducing soil loss and runoff to attracting pollinators — according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Despite rumors of cheaper groceries, prices at Whole Foods have only decreased by 1.2 percent overall after Amazon bought the company for $13.7 billion five weeks ago, says a study by the research firm Gordon Haskett.