Along the Arizona-Mexico border, conservationists are restoring habitat for more than 900 species of wild pollinators in an unprecedented effort that's also designed to create jobs and reduce poverty, reports Alexis Marie Adams in FERN’s latest story, co-produced with Scientific American.

The government has quarantined three dozen farms and thousands of cattle in western Canada as it investigates an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that can be transmitted to people. Ranchers appealed to the House of Commons for compensation for the quarantine or permission to sell the cattle, which are ready for marketing.

Indiana farmer Don Villwock says he's a long-time friend of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, reports Agriculture.com, adding that Villwock "wouldn't confirm or deny that he's among those being vetted" for agriculture secretary. A grain farmer from Edwardsport in southwestern Indiana, Villwock was president of the state Farm Bureau for 14 years, ending in January, and was a proponent of free-markets during discussion of U.S. farm and trade policy.

U.S. district judge William Alsup said he is sympathetic to the plight of bees and beekeepers but he cannot force the EPA to regulate neonicotinoid seed coatings as a pesticide. The environmental group Center for Food Safety, which represented the plaintiffs, said the decision was "a crushing blow" to attempts to control the side effects of the coatings.

The Breakfast Council of "independent" nutrition experts that appeared on the website of Kellogg Co. was a paid panel given talking points by the giant food company, according to a copy of a contract and emails obtained by the Associated Press. Kellogg started the panel in 2011 and disbanded it this year, telling the AP that, as part of a review of its nutrition work, it decided not to continue the council.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in carrying out Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which calls for a 45 percent cut in nitrogen and phosphorus levels in waterways, "a new and controversial debate is looming," says the Des Moines Register. Environmentalists and scientists want to rely on water-quality monitoring to determine progress while farm groups say the best way is to tally conservation practices put in place on the land.

Crop production in the Philippines will drop by 1.7 percent and put an additional 2 million people at risk of hunger due to climate change, "particularly troublesome in light of the Philippines' growing population," forecast to reach 142 million by 2045, said the think tank International Food Policy Research Institute. "Research also shows that effective policies can reduce those impacts."

The presidential election was decided by a fraction of a percentage point, but most voters – slightly more than 60 percent – live in politically lopsided counties where President-elect Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the vote by at least 20 points, says the Daily Yonder. "Even bigger is the percentage of rural voters who lived in a landslide county," amounting to three out of every four.

Just elected to a second term as senator from Kansas, Republican Jerry Moran quashed reports that President-elect Donald Trump wants him to serve as agriculture secretary. Moran told KWCH-TV in Wichita that he has not been offered the position.

Some 62 million trees have died so far this year in California, said USDA, blaming the losses on drought, warmer than usual weather and insect damage. The losses, up by 36 million from a survey earlier this year, are double the losses reported in 2015.

On a 10-4 vote, the National Organic Standards Board sent back to subcommittee the contentious question whether bioponics, a term covering hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics, are part of organic agriculture, reports Food Safety News. "This means that food grown using hydroponic methods may continue to be certified as organic" if producers meet other criteria for the organic label, said FSN.

A study by the CDC and USDA shows that obesity rates among children ages 2-4 who are enrolled in the so-called Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. Rates are down in 31 states, said the Trust for America's Health, but the average of 14.5 percent is still too high.

In a victory for Monsanto, Syngenta and other seed companies farming in Hawaii, a federal appeals court ruled that counties can’t regulate pesticide use or GMO crops, says Civil Beat. “The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Friday that Hawaii state pesticide law is comprehensive, and that the Legislature intended it to be 'uniform and exclusive of additional, local rules.'”

The ethanol industry is too well-established in rural American to be dismantled, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Bloomberg as the deadline nears for an EPA announcement of the so-called ethanol mandate for 2017. "The Renewable Fuels Standard is solid," Vilsack said.

Two years ago, the FDA began testing foods for the presence of disease-causing bacteria as a way to learn how prevalent they are and how to prevent food-borne illness. In its latest round of tests, the agency said 1 percent of cucumbers and 3 percent of hot peppers, such as jalapeños and serranos, carried salmonella bacteria, said Stat, the medical news site.

President-elect Donald Trump attacked over-regulation by the government during his campaign, so "big questions have arisen over how far he'll go," said Civil Eats, which spoke to food-policy activists about the outlook. With Republicans in control of Congress, the budgets of the EPA and the FDA could come under attack, but it would be very difficult to eliminate an agency like EPA, said food-safety advocates.

California went to Clinton, but rural areas were split, says the Sacramento Bee, with many counties in the white, rural north going to Trump. “Trump beat Clinton in 25 California counties, mostly in the Central Valley and the mountains of Northern California, places that long have been bastions of conservatism,” says the Bee.

More than 300 companies, including Monsanto and Unilever, called on President-elect Donald Trump, President Obama and Congress to continue U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, reports NPR. The international treaty commits countries to lowering global climate emissions and keeping world temperature increases below two degrees beyond the pre-industrial standard.

When Americans shop for turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberries and other ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal, they will get a break on prices for the second time in seven years. The price tag for groceries to cook a Thanksgiving feast for 10 people would total $49.87, said the largest U.S. farm group, which has conducted the informal survey of grocery prices since 1968.