The drop in farm income and erosion in farmland values are early signs that the farm bankruptcy rate, now at a low 2 per 10,000 farms, is on the rise, said associate professor Ani Katchova of Ohio State University. The rise will be constrained by the strong equity position of the sector and the benefit of off-farm income for many operators, she said at USDA's annual Outlook Forum.

Climate change is making the Arctic Ocean more acidic as it absorbs C02 from the atmosphere, lowering the water's pH level, says a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

An upsurge in demand by China, the top customer for U.S. food and agricultural goods, will boost U.S. farm exports to $136 billion this year, the first upturn in sales since 2014, said the Agriculture Department. The quarterly forecast is $2 billion higher than USDA's estimate in November, "largely due to expected increases in livestock, poultry, and dairy exports."

Utah could soon become the first state to make it illegal to harass livestock with drones. Passed unanimously by the House, HB217 would make it a class B misdemeanor to harangue livestock with drones, ATVs or dogs, says The Deseret News.

Inspired by the Million Woman March on Washington, D.C., scientists are planning their own march to urge policymakers to base their rules on sound research. “There's been a lot of concern about the fate of science under President Trump. His appointees include climate change skeptics; he's met with an anti-vaccination campaigner. He regularly cites false numbers on things like voter fraud and crime rates, while his surrogates defend the use of "alternative facts," says NPR.

Pacific Northwest fishing and conservation groups have filed suit against the EPA for not doing more to protect wild sockeye salmon from rising water temperatures due in large part to climate change. The lawsuit is considered to be the first against President Trump's EPA.

Released under court order, thousands of pages of emails show how Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator, "closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers, electric utilities" and anti-regulation political groups in opposing environmental regulations while Oklahoma attorney general, said the New York Times. "The correspondence points to the tension emerging as Mr Pruitt is now charged with regulating many of the same companies," said the newspaper, adding, "the emails are unlikely to cause Mr. Pruitt significant new problems."

Consumption of sugary beverages is down for the second year in a row in Mexico, suggesting "that the results of such a tax may be far more long-lasting," says the New York Times. It says a study published on the Internet by Health Affairs found a 5.5 percent decline in sales of sugary drinks in 2014, the first year of the tax, and sales in 2015 were 9.7 percent lower than in 2013, the year before the tax took effect.

In line with the Trump administration's regulatory freeze, the USDA is extending the comment period by 30 days on the proposed organic checkoff, to April 19. The Organic Trade Association, the sponsor of the proposal, said it hoped the USDA will perform a timely review of comments and call a vote on the checkoff.

Six ocean “hotspots” of marine diversity are getting walloped by climate change and industrial fishing, says a study in the journal Science Advances.

The new head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week that the agency’s critics are “justified” in wanting to disband it, said The Guardian. “People across the country look at the EPA at the way they look at [the Internal Revenue Service]. We want to change that. There are a lot of changes that need to take place at my agency to restore the rule of law and federalism,” said Pruitt, blaming the EPA under Obama for “regulatory

Fish and produce are the imported foods associated with the most outbreaks of foodborne illness, say researchers who studied four decades of records. In a study published in the CDC journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, the scientists say imports were cited for an average of three outbreaks a year during 1996-2000, or 1 percent of outbreaks, and an average of 18 outbreaks per year from 2009-14, or 5 percent.

The total household income of crop farmers is 9 percent more volatile than that of livestock producers, say USDA economists in a report that drills into farm household income, which often includes off-farm employment. The report says farm income is more variable than income of non-farmers and that as farms get bigger, so does the degree of volatility of their income.