Nearly one-fifth of Ethiopia is in need of food aid, as a punishing drought kills off livestock in areas where people — especially pregnant women and children — rely on milk for nutrition, Reuters says.

Tom Campbell, a Republican state senator in North Dakota, has announced that he’ll try to steal the U.S. Senate seat in 2018 from Heidi Heitkamp — the state’s sole Democrat in Congress. Heitkamp, who was considered for a role in President Trump’s cabinet, was both the first senator and the first Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee to endorse Sonny Perdue to lead the USDA.

Consumers want more humanely raised meat and food companies want to provide it. Now pig producers are promising more humane measures in the way they raise pigs. But just what those measures will be remains a question in an industry still dominated by the sow gestation crate, says the San Francisco Chronicle.

Iowa, the top corn-producing state in the nation, has faced a punishing drought this summer, all but eliminating any hope of a “bin buster” corn year, despite rain this past week. North Dakota is also facing devastating drought conditions, says the AP, and its biggest ranch and corn organizations have launched efforts to help ranchers and farmers.

John Duarte, a Northern California farmer, has agreed to pay a $1.1 million penalty to settle a years-long case that started in 2012, after he bought and tilled fallow land within a federally protected wetland.

Having failed to win a majority of votes in Tuesday’s special primary, Sen. Luther Strange now faces the possibility that the controversial nature of his appointment could doom him in the Sept. 26 runoff with former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore. If Strange loses to Moore, it could open the door for a Democratic upset in the general election, says Roll Call.

Marine fish don’t just gobble up plastic in the ocean accidentally. They’re actually drawn to eat it, because the algae that attaches itself to the surface of our plastic waste gives it an irresistible (for fish, anyway) rotten seaweed smell, says a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

As talks between Canada, Mexico, and the United States begin on renegotiating NAFTA, here’s an archive of our recent coverage of the trade agreement in Ag Insider. (No paywall)

With avocado production in California down nearly 50 percent from a year ago, prices are climbing, says the LA Times. Extreme heat and drought last summer affected the fruit that’s maturing this season. “When the heavy rains finally arrived in the winter, it was too late,” the report said.

People who shop at Whole Foods expect to get higher-quality food in exchange for paying significantly higher prices. But when it comes to poultry and meat, at least, consolidation in the industry and broadly rising standards mean the same products that Whole Foods sells are increasingly available at conventional supermarket chains for a lot less money, reports Bloomberg.

As NAFTA renegotiations get underway, dairy is shaping up as major sticking point between Canada and the United States. After Canada’s foreign affairs minister insisted on Monday that Canada will defend its tightly controlled approach to its dairy industry, the president of the National Milk Producers Federation accused her of trying to have it both ways on free trade.

If the world utilized every appropriate ocean habitat for aquaculture, it could outproduce the global demand for seafood by 100 times, says a study by scientists at the University of California-Santa Barbara in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Impact investors are now putting more money into food and agriculture than any other sector, using their capital to help ranchers switch to 100 percent grass-fed beef production, to connect small farms to communities with little access to fresh food, and to transition farmland used to grow commodity corn and soy to organic, regenerative systems, says Civil Eats.

The Honolulu-based Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is in the midst of a debate about changing the rules governing non-commercial fishing in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument since the monument’s size was quadrupled by the Obama administration.

In a public letter, the chief executive officer of Impossible Foods defended the company’s methods of producing a popular plant-based burger that is designed to mimic meat. The method includes genetically engineering algae to produce a soy protein, which the FDA has said could raise allergen concerns.

As Mexican officials head to Washington this week to begin renegotiating NAFTA, they are balancing their specific goals with an awareness that the American president cares as much, or more, about the optics of the deal than the specifics, says the Los Angeles Times.  

With Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking to Twitter to welcome immigrants to his country, Canada has gained a reputation for being friendly to new arrivals. But now the nation’s guest farmworker program has come under scrutiny for human rights abuses and treatment that is anything but hospitable.

The Trump administration has allowed polluters to pay less than half the amount in civil penalties they were forced to pay under the three previous administrations, says a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Pierre Omidyar says he wants to build a dairy along the coast of Kauai to reduce Hawaii’s reliance on imported milk, but locals worry that runoff from such an operation, as well as the flies and odors it would bring, would hurt the island’s crucial tourism business, reports The New York Times.