No doubt about it, animal-welfare activists have made the fate of chickens a mainstream concern, says the Washington Post. “In the past two years, nearly 200 U.S. companies — including every major grocery and fast-food chain — that together buy half of the 7 billion eggs laid monthly have pledged to use only cage-free eggs by 2025,” the Post notes.

The average value of farmland including all land and buildings dipped $10 to $3,010 per acre acre in 2016 from a year earlier, the first such decline in the U.S. since the recession of 2009, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service reported in its annual Land Values Summary. Land values have been pressured by booming harvests and falling crop prices.

A backlash is brewing to our age of food perfectionism, reports The Atlantic. With all manner of "experts" prescribing how and what to eat, there now comes an eruption of blogs, tweets, Facebook groups, listicles, Pinterest pages, and other celebrations of "dishes that are disastrous, unattractive, or just unhealthy."

Vegan startup Hampton Creek paid its employees to go into supermarkets and purchase its own eggless Just Mayo, making the product appear more popular than it actually was, before a round of venture funding in 2014, Bloomberg reports.

The Agriculture Department said it sent $11.2 million in a monthly payment to dairy farmers through the insurance-like Margin Protection Program, calculated at the highest payment rate since MPP began in 2014. A week ago, 61 lawmakers urged USDA to respond to low milk prices through larger federal purchases of dairy products and to "offer financial assistance that will directly support U.S. dairy farmers equally."

Amish children owe their extremely low rate of asthma to living and playing around barnyard animals, says a study out by the New England Journal of Medicine. According to the New York Times, researchers were so impressed with their findings that they suggested formulating a spray for children who don’t have livestock at home.

The Italian Senate passed a law that makes it easier for farmers and processors to donate food to charities and encourages restaurants to send food home with diners in doggy bags, says the Guardian. A sponsor says 1 million tonnes of food per year, or one-fifth of annual wastage, will be saved by the bill, which comes six years after France passed similar legislation.

Corn prices are down sharply around the world, reflecting favorable growing weather in the United States, helping to pull down the FAO Food Price Index. The UN agency said cereal prices fell by 5.6 percent and vegetable oil prices dropped by 2.8 percent during July, offsetting firmer dairy, meat and sugar prices.

Farmers and ranchers slashed their production expenditures by nearly 9 percent last year, driven by the end of a seven-year agricultural boom and a collapse in farm income, said USDA. After falling by 54 percent since 2013, U.S. net farm income is forecast to stabilize this year with a small decline; cash expenses also are expected to contract slightly.

The mammoth U.S. grain harvest and reduced competition from South America will set the stage for a rapid increase in exports over the next six months, the chief executive of ADM told analysts. Agrimoney quoted ADM leader Juan Luciano as saying, "Demand continues to be strong and the United States is competitive now for the future months."

The "Reason for Reform" campaign launched by proponents of comprehensive immigration reform is trying to persuade Republican lawmakers to support an overhaul in 2017 with the argument that the U.S. economy would benefit, says Politico. The campaign, backed by a group led by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, underscores that "reform — should it occur next year — will be a fiercely contested legislative fight."

The organic food industry is feeling threatened by a new label on the shelf: “Non-GMO Project Verified.” Organic farmers and manufacturers told NPR that they’re afraid customers don’t realize that non-GMO foods can still be grown with conventional methods, including chemical sprays and synthetic fertilizers.

A dysfunctional and toothless state regulatory system “failed to protect rural communities” and the environment from pork producers that “repeatedly exploited weak Illinois laws to build and expand … massive” confinement facilities over the last 20 years, according to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune.

It's been a decade since low commodity prices made loan-deficiency payments a routine, if arcane, part of U.S. agriculture. But prices are low enough that wheat growers are collecting LDPs and the payments "might even be on the cusp of returning for corn in some parts of the country," says DTN. When farmers request an LDP, the USDA pays them the difference between the support price for a crop and the market price, when prices are below the so-called loan rate.

Advisers for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sought advice from California regulators on ways to revamp U.S. biofuel mandates, said Reuters. Corn-based ethanol is popular in the Midwest so the possibility of change in the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard could hurt her in corn states "like Iowa, where she faces a tough battle against Republican rival Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election."