Where your yellowfin tuna was caught can dramatically change the level of pollutants in its flesh, say researchers at the University of San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography, after testing 117 yellowfin tuna from 12 locations in a first-of-its-kind global study.

The parent company of ABC paid $177 million to Beef Products Inc. to settle a defamation suit filed by the South Dakota meat processor over news stories aired in 2012, said CNN Money. A lawyer for BPI told CNN the settlement was larger than the figure listed by Walt Disney Co. in a quarterly earnings report, leading the network to say "the rest will presumably be covered by insurance."

The anti-obesity Alliance for a Healthier Generation named 323 schools across the country as "America's healthiest schools," based on offering healthy school meals and ensuring physical activity each day. Nearly half of the schools were from Texas, California, Georgia and Arizona. "Schools earned the distinction by successfully meeting a rigorous set of criteria for serving healthier meals and snacks, getting students moving more, offering high-quality physical and health education, and empowering school leaders to become healthy role models," said the alliance.

With the price of avocados too high for everyday Mexicans, the country’s officals are considering importing the fruit. Avocados are native to Mexico, which supplies roughly half the world’s demand, but a pound of the fruit now sells for 80 pesos — the same as Mexico’s minimum wage.

Dry weather in Iowa, the No. 1 corn state, will contribute to a smaller-than-expected U.S. corn crop this year, say analysts ahead of USDA's closely watched August crop report, to be released on Thursday. Even so, this year's harvest would be the third-largest on record for the grain, fundamental to food, feed and biofuel production. The August crop report is USDA's first estimate of the fall harvest and is based on spot checks of thousands of fields and a survey of growers as the crop nears maturity. In a Reuters survey, analysts said they expect a USDA estimate of 13.855 billion bushels based on conditions in early August, down 8.5 percent from the record 15.148 billion bushels of 2016.

The USDA is nearing a decision whether to deregulate a eucalyptus tree that is genetically engineered to tolerate freezing weather for use in tree plantations. It "would become the first genetically engineered tree approved for commercial use in the United States," says the Washington Post.

A new sage grouse conservation plan released by the Interior Department has ranchers and energy developers in the West cheering, while environmentalists worry about the endangered bird’s future.

Researchers at UC-Riverside say desert winds are picking up dust from the widening beaches created as the Salton Sea shrinks, says public broadcaster KPBS in San Diego. The dust from the "playa," as the former lake bed is called, is saltier and higher in some trace elements, although "it was not especially toxic compared to desert soils."

With negotiations for the "new NAFTA" to begin next week, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says he is repeating one message to the White House: First, do no harm to agriculture. U.S. farm exports to Canada and Mexico quadrupled under the 1994 trade agreement, and U.S. farm groups fear that renegotiating the deal will disrupt their duty-free access to the border nations.

The synthetic pesticides and fertilizers used illegally to grow marijuana in national forests produce far more pollution than previously thought, says Reuters. "Thousands of acres" of national forest in California are "waste dumps so toxic that simply touching plants has landed law enforcement officers in the hospital."

Texas Rep. Michael Conaway is getting high marks for his temporary job running the House Intelligence Committee this summer, including its probe of Russia's efforts to disrupt the 2016 elections. The seventh-term Republican, in early stages of writing a panoramic farm bill on the Agriculture Committee, had a one-word answer  — "sure" — when the Texas Tribune asked if he'd like to be the Intelligence chairman someday.

It's still a small part of the market, yet "burgers made from plants instead of animals are capturing more space on U.S barbecue grills this summer," says Reuters, pointing to estimates of global sales of $5 billion by 2020. Consumer research firm Technomic says alternative meat products are targeted at millennials and Generation X, people aged 18-50 years.

Officials at USDA's land stewardship agency told employees to use the phrase "weather extremes" rather than "climate change" as the Trump administration settled into office, says The Guardian, based on emails it obtained that showed the new administration "has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees."

When "USDA" and "co-location of offices" appear in the same sentence, it usually means there's a proposal to consolidate USDA's local operations, particularly crop subsidy and land stewardship, into the same building. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue talked about co-location at the Iowa Ag Summit, but he meant a central location for handling permits from the USDA, Interior Department and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, reports Agri-Pulse.

Minnesota ruled that biofuels will need to contain a mix of 20 percent soybeans or other renewable fuel sources, cutting the amount of emissions while boosting demand for soybeans, said MPR News. "This is an opportunity to add value to farmers' products," state agriculture commissioner Dave Frederickson said last Thursday, according to the report. "Given the fact that the first B10 mandate actually added about 63 cents per bushel, on every bushel sold, we're hoping to double that as we move into a B20 mandate."

The District of Columbia is following cities like New York and San Francisco in moving toward curb-side pickup of waste for composting, saying about "148,000 tons of organic waste could be composted annually — about 60 percent of the food and yard waste generated in the city each year," the Washington Post reported.