Chairman John Barrasso called it "political theater," but Democratic members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee prevented a vote on EPA nominee Scott Pruitt by boycotting a committee meeting. Barrasso said he would meet with the senior Democrat on the panel, Tom Carper, to find a way to move the nomination forward, said The Hill newspaper.

The White House has yet to send the formal nomination documents to the Senate but President Donald Trump's nominee for agriculture secretary, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, is meeting senators this week. The courtesy calls are a combination of get-acquainted sessions and a chance for the nominee to quell any doubts a senator might have. There is no confirmation hearing scheduled yet, says a Senate Agriculture Committee spokeswoman.

Orange production in Florida has plummeted since the arrival of citrus-greening disease. This season's crop in the No. 1 U.S. citrus state is estimated at 71 million boxes, less than half of pre-disease levels, says Agri-Pulse. Clemson University researchers are looking for a cure that involves gene editing.

Dairy companies wrote to governors of 25 states to ask their help in heading off a change in Canadian dairy policy, due to take effect on Wednesday, that they say will further discourage shipments of ultra-filtered milk and other dairy products to Canada. The dairies say the new National Ingredients Policy violates trade agreements.

The world started paying attention to the problem of plastic trash in the ocean when seabirds turned up with plastic rings from six-packs of beer twisted about their necks. Now researchers say tiny bits of degraded plastic are showing up in fish and shellfish at the grocery store, says CBC News.

Snowstorms since late December dumped the equivalent of 17.5 million acre feet of water on the Sierra Nevada, says the Los Angeles Times, pointing to estimates by University of Colorado researchers. "That figure amounts to about a third of what the researchers said was the drought’s 54 million-acre feet shortfall in the snowpack" during the five-year California drought.

In its first estimate of the new growing season, the International Cotton Advisory Committee forecast a world crop of 23.4 million tons, up 2 percent from 2016/17 due to larger plantings around the world. The intergovernmental group estimated U.S. cotton production would rise by 7 percent, a much larger increase than USDA's projection of a 2 percent upturn.

The world's largest seed company, Monsanto, says it will challenge a ruling by a federal judge that allows California officials to require a cancer warning on its weedkiller Roundup, said The Associated Press. If carried out, it would be the first such state-level warning on the herbicide, made with glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world.

At nearly the same time that Wisconsin voters backed Donald Trump for president, the members of a National Farmers Union chapter in central Wisconsin elected the first Muslim as county president in the organization's history. The new president, Alicia Razvi, is a recent entrant to farming and operates a community-supported agriculture farm near Stevens Point, says the NFU.

Farmers in Asia and Europe have destroyed millions of birds as they combat epidemics of avian influenza, says the Wall Street Journal. The United States lost 10 percent of its egg-laying hens in its worst-ever outbreak of bird flu in 2014-15 but this time, U.S. egg producers are enjoying higher prices as they ship eggs to South Korea.

The headlines go to the president's appointee for agriculture secretary — this year, President Trump's selection of former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. But the Agriculture Department has approximately 400 executive jobs, the great majority of them filled by the appointee. Michael Young, the USDA budget director, is the top officer at USDA for the moment, awaiting Senate confirmation of the new secretary.

Scientists are learning how to interpret “environmental DNA” (eDNA), the DNA that marine species naturally shed in water, which will help them track endangered species, check for invasive plants and manage fisheries.

Environmentalists fear state and local officials will feel less urgency to improve water quality now that the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled drainage districts are immune from damage claims, said the Des Moines Register. The court ruling affects a federal lawsuit, expected to go to trial in Sioux City in June, by the Des Moines Water Works that blames drainage districts in three counties in northwestern Iowa for high nitrate levels in the Raccoon River.

If the Trump administration follows through on its threat to impose a 20 percent tax on all goods coming from Mexico, the price of certain imported foods like avocados could go up. But the tax will only be on the so-called dutiable value, which means the wholesale price of the avocado when it crosses the border, which runs around 50 cents. That means a Trump-era avocado might be around a dime more, says The New York Times.

Grocery prices are forecast to rise marginally this year, following the first year of food-price deflation since 1967, said USDA’s monthly Food Price Outlook. Supermarket food prices fell by 1.3 percent in 2016, pulled down by lower prices for beef, pork, dairy and eggs, products that account for one-fifth of grocery spending.

The supermarket tomato, bred to resist bruising, could gain improved flavor thanks to Chinese and U.S. scientists who found a genetic roadmap to the genes that determine the taste of tomatoes, says the Wall Street Journal. Tomatoes are not native to China but the Asian nation has been the world’s largest grower of them since 1995.