More than half the deforestation in the Malaysian half of Borneo is due to palm oil plantations and wood-pulp companies, according to four decades of satellite images, says Reuters. Borneo is shared by Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s top palm oil producers, as well as Brunei.

"Damages to crops appear to be irreversible and rangeland conditions remain generally poor" in east Africa, following scant rainfall during the October-December rainy season, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in a special alert that describes support for agriculture as an urgent need. "Food insecurity is expected to significantly deteriorate by early 2017."

Republican lawyer Gary Baise helped assemble Donald Trump’s agricultural advisory committee last summer. But now he’s been chastised by at least one member of the presidential transition team for his public remarks about Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who Trump is considering for secretary of agriculture.

A prominent medical journal published what the New York Times called a "scathing attack on global health advice to eat less sugar," arguing that such recommendations were based on weak evidence. Just as quickly, however, critics of the study pointed out that it was biased.

In poorer and middle-income countries, baby food is dangerously unreliable, says a study soon to be out in the journal Maternal and Child Nutrition. The researchers called for an international agency to test and certify the nutritious quality of commercial baby food, says The New York Times.

Hunger experts at an FAO meeting in Rome said that if women farmers had the same access as men to land, tools, and credit, crop yields would rise by at least a third and there would be 150 million fewer hungry people in the world, Reuters reports.

After she leaves the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama will continue to advocate for healthy food for children through the non-profit Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), which works with food companies to improve nutrition content of food products and on labeling, Reuters reported.

Each year, Monsanto sponsors a competition among high school students to see which class can grow the most corn on company-owned land, giving the would-be farmers a chance to call the shots and "learn firsthand about the guesswork and gambles that farmers make every year," says Harvest Public Media.

After a four-day meeting, members of a Scientific Advisory Panel were divided over the EPA's conclusion, issued in a September 2016 white paper, that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, is "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans," Agri-Pulse reported.

President-elect Donald Trump is considering Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter for secretary of agriculture, despite his record — or maybe because of it — of opposing animal rights activists, says Politico. In Idaho, Otter signed the country’s toughest “ag gag” law, which carries up to a year in jail and a maximum fine $5,000 if a person is caught using a fake ID to access a farm and then film the activities there.

Hawaii’s sugar workers are packing up the state’s final harvest and waving goodbye to an industry that was once king, says NPR. Mechanization in mills on the mainland, competition from Brazil, and rising labor costs have crippled Hawaiian sugar. Now only one mill remains, and when it shuts down at the end of the year, 675 workers will lose their jobs.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack hopes that new proposed organic regulations for animal welfare will be complete before President Obama leaves office in January, but isn't sure. “I’m hopeful that we get them done,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a report by Harvest Public Media. “I can’t guarantee that they’ll get done, but I’m hopeful they get done.”

With few barriers to entry and younger consumers seeking alternatives to sugary drinks, start-ups in everything from juices and coffee to flavored water are flourishing, says the New York Times. The onetime founder of Odwalla, for example, has rebounded with a nut-drink company called Califia Farms that has hit $100 million in sales within four years.

With sales of cow milk flat or falling and those of plant-based "milk" soaring, a bipartisan group of 34 House member sent a letter to the FDA, urging it to "more aggressively police the improper use of dairy terms, which are used on the labels of many products that have no real dairy ingredients," reports Feedstuffs.

The honorary chairman of the Trump campaign in Idaho, third-term Gov. Butch Otter, was mentioned repeatedly as a possible nominee for Interior secretary. Now his spokesman says Otter is in the mix for Agriculture secretary, and Politico cited unnamed sources in saying, "Otter has been to Trump Tower to talk with the transition team about the agriculture secretary position."

California is so big "[i]t has different droughts in different places," Jay Lund, an engineering professor at UC-Davis, told the Los Angeles Times. Rainfall in the northern Sierra Nevada, a water source for much of the state, is 180 percent of average so far in the wet season, but Southern California, which gets half of its water from local sources, is historically dry.

Officials in 24 states want president-elect Trump to cancel the Clean Power Plan put forth by the Obama administration, says Reuters. The plan calls for lowering power-plant emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, but the Supreme Court has delayed its implantation until a U.S. district court in the District of Columbia decides whether the order is legal.