Utah senators voted 22-6 to urge President Trump to cancel the Bears Ears National Monument designation made in the last days of the Obama administration, reports Deseret News. The 1.35-million-acre area is used by Native American groups, including the Navajo, to forage for wild foods like pine nuts and juniper berries, and to hunt rabbits.

The death notice, written by Rep. Jason Chaffetz himself, appeared a little over a week after he filed a bill to sell 3.3 million acres of federal land in 10 Western states, an area in total nearly as big as Connecticut. "I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow," Chaffetz wrote on Instagram, which recorded nearly 8,000 "likes" for the announcement.

North Carolina is home to 8.8 million hogs, most of them in large barns in the eastern part of the state that draw complaints about noxious odors and the huge volume of manure generated by the hogs. Researchers at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), created in 1994, are running an experiment in raising hogs "without antibiotics in a way that grants them enough space to roam — and that keeps their waste out of open-air lagoons," says the North Carolina Health News.

Building on a 10 percent reduction in the use of antibiotics to treat farm animals, the British Cattle Veterinary Association is encouraging its members and the cattle industry to further reduce the use of the antimicrobials, says The Cattle Site, a website for industry news. The recommendations are aimed at lower overall use of antibiotics and minimizing critically important antibiotics, such as cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones and colistin.

With Democrats boycotting the committee for the second day in a row, the Republican majority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved, 11-0, the nomination of Scott Pruitt to be EPA administrator. The nomination was sent to the Senate for a floor vote after Republicans suspended rules that require the presence of two minority-party members to conduct business.

Citing privacy laws, the USDA removed animal-welfare inspection reports, enforcement records and other material about treatment of animals from its website, reported The Associated Press. The Humane Society of the United States said USDA has "given cover to people who neglect or harm animals and get cited by USDA inspectors."

Monsanto isn’t likely to get a green light to bring GMO corn seeds into Mexico anytime soon, says Reuters. Last week, the country upheld a 2013 Mexican court decision that banned even test plots of GMO corn in Mexico, because of concerns that the genetically modified varieties might contaminate native corn species through cross-pollination.

With 15 Swiss and Normandy milk cows, central Iowa dairy farmer Kevin Dietzel is a small operator with a business plan — "add value to that milk by making cheese" — aimed at the growing demand for upscale local foods, says Harvest Public Media. "We have to do something that's a little bit more original and is also going to be worth that money," says Dietzel, who makes small batches of cheese on the farm.

U.S. food manufacturers and trucking companies are trying to quickly move product into Mexico in case trade relations between the two countries break down after President Trump promised to renege on the North American Free Trade (NAFTA) agreement, says Reuters. The President has also said he is might push for a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports in order to pay for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Critics say the dairy subsidy created by the 2014 farm law, called the Margin Protection Plan and based on the difference between milk prices and feed costs, is inadequate in the face of the steep decline in milk prices since 2014. An alternative approach is being developed, says Dairy Herd Management magazine – a revenue insurance policy.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah has introduced a bill to “dispose,” or sell off, 3.3 million acres of federal public land across 10 states — an area the size of Connecticut, reports The Guardian. The Wilderness Society calls the move “step two” of the GOP’s strategy to take public land out of federal hands, after the Republican House passed a rule allowing the government to sell off federal lands without requiring revenue from the transaction.

There are plenty of reasons for optimism in the corn ethanol industry — record production, a higher mandate for biofuels in the gasoline supply and the inauguration of an ethanol supporter, Donald Trump, as president. All the same, the industry is looking for reassurance that the Trump administration will be a friend, considering that prominent federal appointments have gone to ethanol critics.

Only 29 percent of college-age rural Americans are enrolled in college, far below the 47 percent rate of urban residents aged 18-24, says the New York Times, despite high graduation rates for rural high schools. "Given election results that turned up the volume on the concerns of rural Americans ... higher education leaders are now talking about how to reach the hard-to-get-to."

The company synonymous with Peoria, Ill., Caterpillar, will move its global headquarters to Chicago because it is closer to the global marketplace for the world's largest manufacturer of earth-moving equipment, says the Peoria Journal Star. Caterpillar was founded in Peoria, in central Illinois, in 1925 and has been the dominant employer.