The 21 percent decline in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) following implementation of a soda tax in Berkeley "has important public health implications, providing I think the strongest evidence so far that a tax would reduce SSB consumption," writes Parke Wilde, an associate professor at Tuft's Friedman School of Nutrition, at his blog U.S. Food Policy. The effect was found in a study published in the the American Journal of Public Health this month.

A mallard duck captured near Fairbanks, Alaska, and tested as part of a surveillance program was infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, said USDA. It was the first confirmation of bird flu in the United States since June 2015, at the end of the worst bird flu epidemic to strike U.S. poultry flocks.

Wild seaweed is becoming an increasingly popular food source and moneymaker across South America, says Take Part. Most of the region’s seaweed is gathered from the wild, rather than cultivated as it is other parts of the world, like Asia. Of Chile’s 30,000 wild harvesters, most are women.

"Prized farms are at the center of heated political infighting in Zimbabwe," says the New York Times, with the tactic, used against white landowners in the past, now a lever in the struggle over succession of President Robert Mugabe. At the same time, political opponents are under threat of losing their land, the Mugabe administration promises reforms, including recognition of land ownership, to obtain financing from the international Monetary Fund.

Biointensive farming, which includes close plant spacing, use of seeds from plants that have been naturally pollinated and specific food-to-compost crop ratios, "produces far greater yields than conventional agriculture while using far less land and water," Ensia magazine reports, and is especially well-suited to small-scale farmers in Latin America and Africa looking for low-cost, low-tech solutions to grow food.

An annual tour of the corn belt found evidence that a recent U.S. government forecast for record production might be a bit too rosy, because hot weather has appeared to harm the crop, according to Bloomberg news. "Dozens of people -- among them farmers, agronomists and journalists -- inspecting fields on this week’s Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour are reporting corn yields that trail projections made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture less than two weeks ago," Bloomberg said.

As a handful of companies scale up their operations in anticipation of bringing plant-based meat and other bioengineered foods to market, the question looms of how to fit these 21st-century products into a 20th-century regulatory framework, says Science.

A controversial new study, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, found that, over an eight-year period, cars fueled by corn ethanol would have caused more carbon pollution than using gasoline, reports Climate Central.

In a study of the Berkeley's first-in-the-nation soda tax, researchers found that lower-income residents had reduced their consumption by 21 percent, compared to the pre-tax days, the Los Angeles Times reported. The study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health, looked at the impact of the tax in the first five months after it went into effect.

Researchers are turning to natural solutions like nematodes, spiders, and cover crops to fight the notoriously destructive rootworm in corn crops. “Western corn rootworm has evolved resistance to nearly every chemical and biotech tool deployed against it in the past few decades,” including Monsanto's genetically modified Bt corn, says The Progressive Farmer.

The level of neonicotinoid pesticides found on plants sold by large retailers to gardeners dropped to 23 percent this spring, according to a survey that looked at garden plants in 14 U.S. cities. In 2013 and 2014, neonicotinoid residue was found on more than half of the samples taken. Some experts blame the class of pesticides for Colony Collapse Disorder and other detrimental effects on pollinators.

Dungeness crab is one of the most valuable commercial fisheries on the U.S. West Coast, worth nearly $170 million in Washington, Oregon, and California in 2014, a short film on Yale Environment 360 says, but the fishery is also threatened. As acidifying waters alter the chemistry of the world’s oceans, scientists and fishermen are just beginning to understand how this economically, culturally, and ecologically important species will be impacted.

Researchers investigating the relationship between belief and food found that the way meat production is described can influence the meat-eating experience, according to a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled the New York State Grown & Certified program and launched a $20 million food hub in the Bronx to increase access to locally-grown farm produce, the governor’s office said.

The USDA's effort to elevate farming as a career option for veterans once they exit the military is moving into a new phase, says Military Times, as officials "unveiled ... plans to better explain and market a host of industry jobs to recently separated service members, calling it a growth area that fits nicely with the skills and training of those veterans."

Earlier this year, Tucson, Arizona, became the first and only place in the U.S. to be named a City of Gastronomy by the United Nations’ Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO, says the New York Times. The desert city of 500,000 joined 17 others, including Parma, Italy; Bergen, Norway and Ensenada, Mexico to carry the designation.

A preliminary estimate by Louisiana State University's AgCenter says the historic flooding will cost the state's ag sector $110 million in lost and reduced-quality crops, increased production costs, and infrastructure damage, The Advertiser reports.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Glassley of Iowa said he would hold hearings next month on "a wave of consolidation among seed and chemical producers, including the merger of Dow and DuPont," the Des Moines Register reported. The announcement came one day after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the $43 billion merger of ChemChina and Swiss-based Syngenta, which has significant operations in the United States.

The State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology is building a cloud-based clearinghouse that it hopes will help farmers and others in the food industry "make sense" of the growing mountain of data and "put it to good use," reports The Enterprisers Project.