Civil conflicts and their consequences, including refugees needing food in neighboring countries, are a factor in 21 of the 39 countries that need food assistance, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in a quarterly report. Warfare in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria has disrupted food supplies for at least 40 million people, it said.

After meeting President-elect Donald Trump, Gov. Terry Branstad of Iowa, a leading farm state, was noncommittal about taking a role in the incoming Republican administration. Branstad has been mentioned as potential U.S. ambassador to China and Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Des Moines on Thursday as part of his "thank you" to voters tour.

The Commerce Department issued a final rule intended to crack down on illegal fishing and fraudulent sales of seafood imports. The result of years of work, the rule will require a paper trail from the fishing boat to the U.S. border for cargo deemed at risk of mislabeling or illegal fishing, said the Wall Street Journal.

USDA has accepted more than 600,000 acres into a Conservation Reserve initiative to preserve grasslands and aims to enroll at least an additional 200,000 acres in a sign-up that ends on Dec. 16. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) says a large part of the land is in states where there is a high risk of grasslands being converted to cropland or development.

Often cast as the regulatory bogeyman in rural America, the EPA has not done a good job in battling its poor reputation, says administrator Gina McCarthy. The Morning Consult quotes McCarthy as telling reporters, "I think we have not done as well as we could developing a rural strategy in cooperation with other agencies, and certainly have more presence in rural communities."

Researchers say Indonesia is clearing more forest land – as much as 2 million acres a year – than any other nation in the drive to produce palm oil and logs for paper mills. The government tightened a moratorium against converting peat swamps to plantations this week, said Associated Press, a step that a conservation group says will reduce fires during the dry season and could cut Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions substantially.

“About a third of the world's soils are degraded because of soil erosion, contamination, urbanization and other issues,” but planting pulses like lentils and chickpeas could help, says Reuters, quoting a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report.

Market prices for wheat, corn and hogs fell this fall to their lowest level in 10 years, said Purdue economist Chris Hurt, who predicts farmers will lose money on hogs for months to come. "The industry will need to consider a reduction in the breeding herd in the last half of 2017 in order to boost prices back closer to break-evens in 2018," says Hurt at farmdoc Daily.

The giant U.S. food processor Tyson Foods launched a $150-million venture-capital fund "to invest in high-tech products and services that could refresh its stable of products, which include chicken, hot dogs and hamburgers," reports the Wall Street Journal. One focus of the fund will be alternative forms of protein, a field that includes plant-based foods, insect-based protein products, meat grown from self-reproducing cells and meat from 3-D printers.

Australia is setting up a $200-million innovation fund — half public and half private money — to try to commercialize breakthrough research from universities, government agencies and other research bodies, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Among the projects are Kebari, an ultra-low-gluten barley and FutureFeed, an additive for livestock rations made from seaweed that dramatically reduces methane emissions by cattle.

The federal overseer of the futures markets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, re-proposed limits on speculative futures and swaps by investors in 25 physical commodities ranging from corn and soybeans to natural gas, crude oil and precious metals. The CFTC also re-proposed a definition of bonafide hedging — important to food processors, utilities and airlines, who use futures to assure the price and supply of materials.

The policies of the "Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, a taxpayer-funded insurance program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) and administered by a network of private companies,” punish farmers for environmentally-friendly practices, like planting cover crops, says Kristin Ohlson in FERN’s latest story, which was produced with Ensia.

A bipartisan water bill that includes drought relief for California could be put to a vote in Congress before the end of this week, said House and Senate leaders after agreeing on terms of the $558 million package. California Sen. Barbara Boxer said the bill tramples on the Endangered Species Act in order to divert more water to agriculture at the expense of salmon and the imperiled Delta smelt, said The Associated Press.

A new report on consumer beliefs by the Pew Research Center found that a lot of Americans aren’t swayed by scientific findings that GMOs are safe to eat, that food beliefs are generally non-partisan, and that plenty of Americans are generally skeptical about science.

One of the largest cullings in a decade is planned for the bison herd at Yellowstone National Park, says Reuters. Plans call for animals that stray outside the park boundaries to be targets for hunters and for the animals to be herded to tribal land for slaughter.

Budget hawk Virginia Foxx of North Carolina will chair the House Education Committee in the session that begins in January, Republican leaders announced. Barring a resolution by lawmakers in the next few days, the committee will have to write a child-nutrition bill next year, repeating the work it did this year.

“Climate change and the flow of farm chemicals and coastal sediment into the waters that wash over one of Australia’s most significant nature areas, the Great Barrier Reef, pose the biggest threats to its survival, according to a government report to Unesco released early Friday,” says The New York Times.

Two researchers from Purdue developed a hydrogenation process to solidify soybean oil for use in foods without creating trans fats, which can raise cholesterol and lead to heart disease and diabetes. The FDA started a three-year phase-out in 2015 of partially hydrogenated oils from the food supply.