Growers "dug about 2,500 wells in the San Joaquin Valley last year alone, the highest number on record," says the Sacramento Bee, describing "a kind of groundwater arms race" to offset the greatly curtailed amounts of irrigation water from state and federal water projects.

The grassroots can beat Big Soda, says Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney in an interview about the City Council vote during the summer to put a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on soda and sugary beverages. "Don't be afraid of Big Soda. They are not that tough," Kenney told Vox.

When the largest U.S. farm group sent 59 shoppers into supermarkets to check the prices of food for a fall meal, they found the tally, on average, was down by a surprisingly large eight percent from a year ago.

On paper, Republican Rep. David Valadao should be at a disadvantage, running for re-election in a U.S. House district that is 57 percent Latino and where Democrats have a 17-point advantage in voter registration. Yet, in the Central Valley of California, "the nation's most productive agricultural region, the drought drives everything," says the Los Angeles Times.

The kiddos can now start their day off with a little McDonald’s happiness. The company will launch a breakfast-themed happy meal at 73 locations in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region, with a choice between two McGriddles or an Egg & Cheese McMuffin sans the Canadian bacon.

Federal investigators say they haven’t found much evidence to back up claims of labor abuse on Hawaiian fishing boats, reports Civil Beat. The officials started interviewing foreign workers after an Associated Press investigation revealed human trafficking, egregious pay and abusive working conditions for the Southeast Asian men who make up the majority of Hawaii’s fishing fleet crews.

Pesticide manufacturers Syngenta and Bayer appear to have secreted away studies that showed their pesticides did serious harm to honeybees, rather than revealing the results to the public. After Greenpeace obtained the studies from the EPA through the Freedom of Information Act, scientists are calling on the two companies to operate with more transparency, says The Guardian.

Due to privacy laws that have stymied regulators, no one can say for sure how many CAFOs are in the U.S., much less how large the animal operations really are, says Inside Climate News. “Thousands of industrial farms across the country release contaminants into the nation's water and airways, but in many states like North Carolina, the public has limited access to information about them."

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Montana Sen. Jon Tester says the government should deny on antitrust grounds Bayer's proposed $66 billion purchase of Monsanto, given that it would result in a company controlling nearly 30 percent of the world's seed market and a quarter of pesticide sales.

The Canadian trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, declared that the European Union was incapable of finalizing a trans-Atlantic trade deal and walked out of negotiations, said Reuters. The environmental group Friends of the Earth said it was time to kill the Canada-EU pact and a proposed U.S.-EU free-trade agreement.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers, whose members make construction equipment as well as farm machinery, is running a pair of broadcast ads in swing states to promote infrastructure spending, each slanted toward a Trump or Clinton audience, says AgWeb. An AEM spokesman says it is a "unique way to approach our messaging to external audiences."

Seven major food companies, with $124 billion in combined annual revenues, will work with growers around the world to reduce water use and pollution, said World Wildlife Fund and Ceres, a nonprofit group promoting sustainable food. The companies, Diageo, General Mills, Hain Celestial, Hormel Foods, Kellogg, PepsiCo and WhiteWave Foods, will submit detailed sustainable sourcing and water stewardship plans as part of the AgWater Challenge.

In a preliminary ruling, China's Ministry of Commerce said it will put a duty of 33.8 percent on shipments of distillers dried grains from the United States, a step that could affect ethanol makers and rebound against U.S. soybean meal usage, said Agrimoney. Some in the commodity trade speculated China was playing tit-for-tat with a U.S. complaint to world trade authorities over Chinese farm subsidies.

U.S. growers will plant a record 88.5 million acres of soybeans in 2017, up nearly 6 percent from the mark set this year and pointing toward the second crop in a row to exceed 4 billion bushels in the estimation of Informa, a private consulting company, reports Reuters. The USDA forecasts a record soybean crop this year of 4.27 billion bushels, far exceeding demand and driving down prices for the coming year.

USDA's biotechnology regulators say that two genetically engineered potato varieties from J.R. Simplot, developer of the first GE potato to resist bruising, can be grown safely and do not need federal regulation.

One of the poorest nations on earth, Liberia has made palm oil a key part of its campaign to create jobs and reduce poverty. The head of the country's National Investment Commission says the palm oil sector could bring employment to up to 100,000 Liberians, says the Guardian, but "there was little consideration in this process of those who lived on the land or had the right to it."