The Energy Department announced it would be disbanding the Office of International Climate and Technology, which was established in 2010 to help foreign countries lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

An official at the Department of Veterans Affairs, speaking about Agent Orange, "downplayed the risks of the chemical herbicide and questioned the findings of scientists, journalists and even a federal administrative tribunal that conflict with his views," ProPublica reported. Agent Orange was a defoliant sprayed in rural areas during the Vietnam War and has been linked to a range of illnesses suffered by veterans of the war.

Since the Great Depression, there have been fewer and fewer U.S. farms, thanks to mechanization, hybrid crops and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that have boosted productivity and allowed each farmer to cover more acres. A side effect, says Harvest Public Media, is the draining of the rural population and the drop in demand for services of all sorts - schools, health care, food or equipment - in the small towns across the countryside.

By far, Sonny Perdue had the latest starting date for any agriculture secretary in USDA history – 13 weeks after President Trump took office. Perdue lamented at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that history is going to repeat itself with a long wait, likely running into the fall, for the rest of the team of executives that runs USDA.

Some 3 million school-age children participated in USDA's summer nutrition program in 2016, down 5 percent from the previous year and the first decline after four years of significant growth, said the antihunger Food Research and Action Center. The program, which provides a daily meal, reaches a much smaller group of low-income children than the school lunch program, about one in seven.

The Food and Drug Administration decided foodmakers need more time to put the updated Nutrition Facts label on their packages and said it will allow additional time beyond the July 28, 2018, deadline set two years ago. The new deadline will be announced later, said the agency, to the applause of the food industry and the dismay of consumer groups.

The USDA's National Organic Program said it revoked the certification of a Turkish company because it exported soybeans certified as "organic" to the United States that had been treated with pesticides. The action came after the Washington Post last month revealed that significant imports of both corn and soybeans had been labeled organic when they were not.

Ten percent of the world’s population is now obese, and obesity levels are rising even in countries previously known for food scarcity, says a study designed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

With China and the United States trying to improve trade relations, White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced the publication of the USDA’s final details for beef exports to China, which have been barred since the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, in 2003.

In an interim report to President Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah should be scaled down, without suggesting the appropriate size.

Aerial hog hunting is a booming, albeit niche, market in Texas, home to one-third of the six million wild hogs that cause millions of dollars in damage to U.S. crops and livestock annually, says Reuters.

The chief executive of CTC Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira announced that Brazilian regulators have approved the use of a genetically modified version of sugarcane, the first time any country has allowed commercialization of biotech cane.

In joint comments to the U.S. trade representative’s office, two U.S. dairy groups said they will work with the Trump administration to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement in hopes of gaining wider access to the Canadian market.

President Trump will nominate Dawn Stump, a former vice president of NYSE Euronext, as a commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has also selected Jeffrey Gerrish to be a deputy U.S. trade representative.

Seven U.S. cities, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, have adopted so-called soda taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages since November 2014. Now researchers say they’ve identified three factors for success in such efforts.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, left Italy after a few hours of a two-day meeting of environment ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations.

In the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, California is teaming up with China and Germany to fight climate change.